


The Only Rule I Need

by LittlePageAndBird



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Deception, F/M, Relationship Problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-21 10:06:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 23,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2464352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittlePageAndBird/pseuds/LittlePageAndBird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>She doesn't know he is telling her he loves her because he is trying to remind himself that this is how he feels. Maybe if he tells her enough times, he believes, he'll convince himself.</em>
</p><p>The Doctor has his River back after a thousand years; as they stay still and enjoy each other's company everything, for the first time, seems perfect. But beneath the surface, kept secrets and buried lies reveal that perfection is far from the truth. How long can they keep up the façade, and what happens when it falls away?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Morning after a Millennium

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all it contains belongs entirely to the BBC.  
> Hello, sweeties.  
> It has to be said that the Twelfth Doctor and River Song look like quite a wonderful couple. This is based on the reconciliation that would take place between them if River managed to somehow survive the Library and they found each other again (as well as Steven Moffat's comment that they would be "very sexy together". Elementary!).  
> The 12th Doctor has been described as "fierce" and "difficult", but perhaps if anyone's going to be an exception to all of that it's the woman he loved for centuries and lost for a millennium.  
> For those who also want River to return, and will dwell in fantasy until it happens. Enjoy!

Morning was intense, unadulterated bliss. The Doctor had allowed himself to fall into a peaceful sleep only when he was sure she was already there, when her soft breathing warmed his skin interspersed with those sleepy incoherent murmurs that always came from her when she was lost in dreams. He had carefully wriggled down so that their faces were level to gently stroke the damp linger of tears from her cheeks, and then he had pressed his forehead against hers tenderly and let sleep discover him for the first time in over a thousand years.

He awoke several hours later with both arms wrapped lazily around her waist and his nose buried in her hair, two bodies blended messily into a hot tangle of limbs. River was still asleep, eyes fluttering wildly behind closed eyelids, so he allowed himself countless minutes to let his gaze drift over every inch of her golden skin, dewy from last night to the point that it edged on shimmering.

She was still encased in dreams by the time he had finished memorising her this way, painting the image of her sleeping corpse across his mind. He shuffled close enough to press his face into her shoulder, curling up snugly against her hip. She was like a drug; the sweet taste of perfume and sweat and fire fizzed against his lips in a euphoric cocktail that made his eyes flutter closed with a contented sigh.

He spent minutes upon minutes lost in the feel of her, drinking in everything he had almost let himself forget and realising that there was not another moment in his life when the level of his happiness had even compared to this glorious morning.

"Sweetie…"

Her voice greeted him in a sleepy whisper, so hushed for fear of fragmenting the heavenly peace dipped in the sweet ecstasy of lingering afterglow. The Doctor forced his eyes to remain closed for just a moment as a smile crept bashfully across his face, thinking of all the days that had passed in which he had not been called that name and thanking every godforsaken star in the sky that the woman who had christened him with it was next to him, pressed so closely against his side that he could feel the quickening pulse of her beautiful heart.

He finally allowed himself the reward of letting his eyes snap open and fall into hers, shimmering pools of emerald that ignited on his gaze. The blend of constant rage and despondency he had discovered residing there for the last four months had vanished with the night, and he knew then that this had been all she'd desired, what she had been silently asking of him every time their eyes had met. She'd been looking for reassurance that she was still loved, still wanted. He hoped that last night had confirmed to her that she was so much more than just that; she was needed, desperately and with fierce intensity to the point that he seriously questioned in that moment whether he'd ever be strong enough to break away from her touch.

"Good morning, Professor River Song." He'd never tire of saying her name, the way it popped on his tongue like a melody should.

Her smile could have outshone the entire Cosmos. "It is, isn't it?"

They lost minutes gazing at each other. Her head dipped to become level with his, and with the new closeness he noticed the barely-there swell around her eyes, a flashing reminder of last night that made his hearts press up against his ribcage.

He loosened his grip around her waist to bring a hand above the silken covers, resting it with soothing tenderness on her warm cheek. Her eyes flickered closed, a lazy smile on her face as he dragged his thumb lightly across her eyelid, down the gentle slope of her nose, tracing the outline of her lips and remembering what it had felt like when they had pressed against his own after torturous years in the absence of them. Whispering an old Gallifreyan word for beauty, he tucked his thumb in the corner of her mouth to feel a smile curve into it.

"What now?" she asked in a husky murmur as he traced her jaw, feathery eyelashes framing the wicked gleam in her eyes as bad thoughts flitted between them.

He knew exactly what he wanted; he'd known from the moment she had fallen asleep in his arms. "Breakfast?" he suggested, knowing that after everything that being in love with each other had dragged them through, a bit of normality, only if for a little while, would be nothing short of perfection.

 

He didn't actually make it to the Tardis kitchen for another hour, being as reluctant to leave her as she was to let him go. Getting dressed was a rather difficult procedure when every few seconds with a protesting whine her arms would wrap around his shoulders and drag him back onto the pillows.

"Aren't you hungry?" he'd asked eventually when he felt her pulling him back yet again, not entirely caring about the answer as he spun around in her arms and the vision of her wrapped up in the golden sheets with her abundant curls spilling about her shoulders made the breath in his lungs burn.

A playful smirk had crawled across her lips as she knelt up to pull idly at the buttons on his shirt. "Not for food…"

"Stop it."

Her teeth closed over her bottom lip coyly. "Make me."

He shook his head at her pleading eyes; the ones that made him feel like agreeing to anything.

Make her he did, compensating for all the times she had uttered those two words in the presence of others and he had had to restrain himself from making her against the nearest wall.

Being alone with River was paradise. His hands matted easily in her dishevelled hair as he tilted her head back to claim her lips, feeling her melt against him in an instant and smiling against her on realising she was just as liable to give in to him as he was to her, just as hopelessly enamoured. Their kiss became an exchanged thank-you, for last night, for surrendering to each other after far too long of resisting. A noise that sounded like a bubbly little laugh came from her throat as she angled her head to let her nose slide past his, her palms pressed against his chest that made him aware of his own staccato pulses. There was that beautifully familiar taste of longing and audacity in her that felt like being set free.

When he pulled away with some reluctance, he took her breath with him. She whispered to unseen deities as she flopped back limply onto the pillows, a smug smile on her face and a satisfied hum in the back of her throat.

Knowing full well that he was expected to follow her, he chuckled to himself, dug his hands casually in his trouser pockets and sauntered out of the bedroom without another word.

He heard her gasp dramatically. "Where do you think you're going? You can't kiss me like that and then leave!"

He grinned, turning on his heel and popping his head around the doorframe. "Then come with me."

 

He was bustling around the kitchen collecting pancake ingredients into a mixing bowl and whistling an improvised tune under his breath when the soft pad of footsteps brought an impish smile to his face.

Before long, there was a soft gasp next to his ear. "Pancakes?" she cried, snaking around him and hopping up onto the bench with a giggle. "My favourite!"  
The whisk was poised in mid-air as he took her in, his very own goddess dressed only in a navy blue shirt that reached halfway to her knees. She had washed the remainder of makeup from her eyes and dragged a brush through her hair so that she was all fluffy and fresh and gorgeous. "That's my shirt," he stated slowly, glinting eyes trailing up the buttons.

She shrugged lightly, fiddling with the hem of the shirt and biting back a smile. "I couldn't find my clothes."

He frowned incredulously. "They're on the floor, where you left them."

"You mean where _you_ left them." Her comment brought a light red tinge to his cheeks. "Oh sweetie, I do believe you're blushing!"

"It's one of the many effects that you have on me."

It took quite a lot of effort not to let the other effects take hold as he attempted to finish the pancake-making procedure, a difficult task to say the least when she couldn't seem to stop touching him; running her hands through his hair and curling her ankles around his hips whenever he passed her bench.

More time than it rightly should have been later, they sat opposite each other at the little dining table with intertwined feet as they tucked into their breakfast.

"So…" She caught a trickle of syrup on her tongue when it dripped from the pancake poised on her fork. "Is this what you feed all your one-night stands?"

He almost choked. "I'm sorry?"

She eyed him across the table, and he felt as if he was being challenged. "You've never made me breakfast before."

"Well, you'd never let me," he reminded her. "You hardly ever stayed until breakfast time in the first place; when you did, you always had other ideas…"

She smirked at the memory. "How did you know I loved pancakes?"

"You told me once."

She raised her eyebrows sceptically. "And you remembered?" He answered her with a no more than a smug smile. "You're lying," she decided shortly. "Lucky guess; everyone loves pancakes."

He hummed, a knowing smile written mysteriously across his face. "And I assume everyone also loves Rosso Corsa red, dresses made from Twilworm silk, Caliberry tea, Crepitus Violetta flowers… and I suppose everybody has habits of falling asleep in the bath on a shockingly regular basis, sleeping with their head at the wrong end of the bed and naming all the stars that used to make up the Kasterborous Constellation when they have writer's block."

Her laugh was breathless with surprise. "I can't even remember telling you that! How on earth do you still remember all those little things?"

He smiled fondly. "I couldn't possibly forget anything about you, River. And excuse me, _all your one-night stands_?"

She shrugged, putting on a façade of nonchalance. "I don't know what you did in those thousand years."

"I certainly didn't do _that_."

"Oh come on," she snorted. "Never?"

"Never," he insisted.

There was a little silence as she pushed her pancake in circles around her plate. "I don't… mind, you know… if you did. If there were others, that's ok."

"What an enormous lie you just told, River Song," he laughed.

"Well…" The hint of sulkiness in her voice made his hearts drop into his feet. "I have to be alright with it, don't I? I can hardly expect you to wait a thousand years for me."

He relished lifting her head and putting the spark back into her eyes with his words. "But I did."

She couldn't stop herself from smiling. "Why?"

It pained him that she still had to ask such a question, before it occurred to him that she may very well be asking simply to hear the answer she already knew.

Either way, he didn't really care about her motives. He just wanted to say it to her, over and over again until he had made up for all the times he'd left it unspoken.

"Because I love you."

It was the second time in their entire lives he had uttered those words, the first not being lost in the warm glow of last night, but they felt so very right, so calming when he was looking at her, when it was just the two of them floating between the stars.

Her eyes sparkled intensely the way they had last night, solemnity overtaking the smile on her face to the point where she looked suddenly close to tears. A pang of old shyness made him look away for a moment, a slightly nervous laugh dispelling the silence. "Sorry."

"What for, sweetie?" she asked quietly, her eyes lost in his even though he had his head bowed, tracing the pattern the syrup had left on his plate with his eyes.

"I never told you with my old face, did I?"

He was so wrapped up in his own guilt that he didn't notice River slipping off her chair and tiptoeing towards him. He started at the feel of her arms around him, relaxing against her to find comfort that he never seemed to stop needing.

"I knew." She kissed his cheek and flashed him a reassuring smile before running her finger through the syrup on his plate, licking it off with a hum. "I'll always know. But you can still tell me as many times as you like."

"I just might."

She climbed into his lap, and he rested his forehead in the curve of her nose affectionately. "I know how to say it in over a billion languages."

"Oh god," she groaned playfully. "You're going to tell me them, aren't you?"

"I'll save them for a rainy afternoon."

She cocked an eyebrow. "I have other ideas, thank you very much. Saying that, we _could_ do both at the same time…"

He'd never wished for rain until that morning.

"River…?"

"What?"

"You're not wearing any bottoms."

Her grin was positively wicked. "I know."

 

It was delightfully shameful how much of the next few days they spent in bed, lost in the warm haze of the idyllic honeymoon period they had never had.

Her habits fell into his life without him being entirely conscious of them. The most intriguing was that she took to wearing his clothes, with exceptional stubbornness; despite the amount of times he told her that her own clothes were all still occupying their own rails and shelves on the wardrobe floor. The first time he'd admitted he'd kept all her things, it had made her look at him in that way she did that seemed as if she was just realising that he loved her for the first time; but after a few days she would just smirk and slip on one of his shirts, usually the one he had selected to wear so that he had to go and find another one. To her delight his trousers fitted her too, if she rolled the legs up and wore a belt, which she did. He wasn't entirely sure what this obsession was with his clothes given how much she'd used to mock them rather viciously, but of course he was never going to complain. Especially when the result was that after a week every single item in his wardrobe smelled irrepressibly like her.

She was so lazy. And so was he. When they did drag themselves downstairs, dishevelled and full of giggles, they would drape themselves in comfy chairs and read books. When what passed for day in their little bubble dawdled into evening they'd attempt to cook, not always with success or indeed clothes; they'd take a bubble bath or a hot shower before bed and then what had become their very own little married-couple routine would start all over again. It was the first time they had ever done absolutely nothing with themselves. And they adored it.

Nine days into their dreamy retreat, he heard this: "Sweetie, can I ask you something?"

He clambered onto the mattress, handing her a warm cup of tea and crossing his legs underneath him. That particular morning they had got dressed just to settle right back into bed again, far too carefree to do little else. "Of course you can, darling."

She raised an eyebrow at him over her mug. "I'm darling now?"

"Apparently… is that a problem?"

"It isn't."

"Good." He grinned. "What did you want to ask?"

She edged closer to him, chewing her lip restlessly the way she always did when she was nervous. "Are you bored?"

The question tumbled from her lips so quickly that he thought he'd misheard her.

"I'm sorry?"

When all she did was gaze up at him anxiously, he plucked the tea from her and placed it on the bedside table so that he could cradle her hands in his. "How could I ever be bored? River, I waited a thousand years for you; every single minute is one minute more than I ever thought I'd have. Being able to see you, speak to you, touch you every day will never cease to amaze me; you're my miracle, and I am never in a million lifetimes going to get bored of you."

Rather proud of himself for managing to say such a thing while maintaining eye contact without stuttering hopelessly, the huge smile that had flooded his face was wiped off with a sudden thought. "Oh. Are you bored? Is that why you asked?"

"No! No. I'm not." She smiled as her fingers wound around his, clutching him tightly. "These have been the best days of my life," she admitted coyly. "I just thought- well, you're the Doctor. I fell in love with you because you travel the stars; that's who you are."

"There's nothing wrong with taking a holiday, is there?" he asked kindly, leaning forwards so his nose bopped hers.

"No. But I know this must all be very… normal, for you, and I don't want you to feel trapped. I want you to know that… if you want to get back to the Universe then that's ok. Any time," she told him, her voice tight with trying to sound sincere.

The Doctor knew full well that she was just absorbed in their blissful pocket of time as he was, and just as aware that it couldn't last forever. But he didn't mind like she did, didn't carry the fears that seemed to be plaguing her because he had formed a very simple solution in his head the day he had found her.

He held up a finger between them, feeling that it was the right time. "I have one condition."

She threw him a wan smile, despite the glimmer in her eyes. "What's that?"

"When I go back to the stars," he said steadily, savouring his words as he cradled her jaw in his hands. "You come with me."

He watched her pupils dilate as the warm feel of a breath leaving her hit his skin. "Do you want me to?" she whispered, biting her lip in an almost self-conscious motion.

"Oh, no, I can't stand you." He winked, letting his head fall into the crook of her shoulder and inhaling her lingering morning smell, bed and honey and warmth. "Whenever and wherever you want, Missus; you'll always, always be welcome in my life. And that's all I'm going to say, because that's all you need to know."

She didn't speak, only snuggling closer to him with a little sigh. "Honestly. What are you like? I don't feel trapped, you silly woman." He smiled, pressing his lips to her neck. "And that's saying a lot, for being married to someone with a handcuff fetish."

Her shoulders shook with laughter beneath his forehead. "God, I love you."

The Doctor pulled back just enough to see her, admiring the little creases that formed around her eyes when she laughed. He found himself tracing them with the tip of his finger, and she dipped out of the way shyly. "Do you want to know something?" he asked quietly, tilting her head back up and persisting with outlining every single feature of her face. She hummed, sleepy eyes darting between his. "I always regretted not staying still with you." He smiled softly, gesturing at the dishevelled golden sheets they were wrapped up in, their cups of tea on the bedside table alongside their empty plates from breakfast in bed. "We never let ourselves do this; we never let ourselves just… _be_."

"We couldn't," she reminded him gently. "Not with our timelines; and it wasn't really who we were back then anyway." She wound a strand of his hair around her little finger, brushing it back fondly. "I loved being us when we were young. I'll always love those days; they were still perfect to me, in their own way. You shouldn't have regrets about them, sweetie."

"Oh, I regretted so many things when I lost you."

She shuffled closer to him, playing with the buttons on his shirt- she had a thing about buttons- as concern clouded her features, something he both loved and loathed. He could barely stand it when she worried, so much so that it had been the reason why he'd become as skilled as she at hiding the damage in the bow tie days. "Like what?" she prompted softly, searching his eyes as if trying to discover the answers there.

"The little ordinary things; never making you breakfast, not buying you flowers for no good reason, not spending hours upon hours just looking at you and realising how exceptionally beautiful you are…" He broke into a shy grin. "Not _smelling_ you enough! Have I ever told you how delightful you smell?"

"Several times over the last nine days," she giggled.

"Good." He smoothed out the crinkles of his shirt that was wrapped around her. "That was another thing. Not saying what I thought every time I looked at you; not saying how brave, and gorgeous, and _mad_ I think you are. And especially never telling you… how much I love you."

It had become a compulsion to meet her eyes when he spoke these words, just to see the way they softened. It was a rare look; one only evoked through expressions of love. He made a point of telling her with his new Scottish voice at every given opportunity, and wondered how he could ever have left it unsaid.

"Well, I think you've more than made up for all of that. But you didn't need to." She couldn't seem to stop playing with his shirt, and he wasn't about to stop her. "Why didn't you tell me any of this when we first found each other again?" she questioned absent-mindedly, turning up his collars and folding them down once more.

"I thought it would be too late. And honestly, when I was younger I watched how much you suffered to be with me… and I didn't want you to go through that all over again; I put you in so much danger."

"You say that like it's a bad thing." She smiled, running her hands down to his wrists to fiddle with the buttons on his shirt cuff. "You were worth all of it, you know. And I'll never regret a single second." She reached up to catch him in a kiss, rewarding him with the salty sweet taste of bacon sandwiches and hot tea haunting her lips. "There's no me without you. And that's the only rule I need."


	2. Blank Canvas of Faded Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is not quite as it seems. But the Doctor has always been a liar.

_One year earlier._

* * *

The screech of the easel legs scraping against the floor as he drags it roughly to the console room is horrifying.

Painting. Painting would help.

He sets up the easel, takes the paintbrush he has been holding between his teeth and poises it above the paint palette.

He knows which scene to paint; has done for a while. There are only grey flickers left in his head, but he's sure it will come back to him once he starts. It has to.

Start with the sky, he tells himself; something easy. There were a lot of stars that night, he remembers, and the sky was pitch black-

No. It was indigo, with red streaks. Purple streaks.

Were there streaks?

Were there _stars_?

There were, they were huge and they filled the entire sky. You could read a book by them-

No, no. That was Calderon Beta.

Giving up on the sky, he thinks about the Towers, the ones that had sung to them on their last night. Oh, he remembers how they _sang_. How it seeped through to his bones and brought stinging tears to his eyes. He still holds an image of them in his head, silvery and reflecting the moonlight, but they are fuzzy at the edges. He cannot recall their shape, their height, however hard he tries. He supposes he can be forgiven; his concentration had certainly not been on setting that night.

His mind turns, with quite a great stab of pain, to the woman he was always going there to say goodbye to, a goodbye without a goodbye because of godforsaken spoilers.

He is about to dip the brush in the crimson splodge of paint to start on her dress when he freezes. Her dress wasn't red. He's thinking of another date… perhaps even another person.

The shame makes him burn, and he concentrates until the veins running across his temples bulge.

Her dress. It was green- no, gold. Both? He's sure he remembers how it shimmered, but maybe that was just her; she always does have a sort of glow, in what memories he has left of her. He doesn't know any more.

He _clings_ to hope. Maybe he can just paint her face; that can't be too difficult, he thinks, feeling himself relax a little.

He decides to start with her eyes. Instinctively he fees that rush, of trepidation and want and falling in love, all at once as he had without fail each time her eyes had fallen into his.

He remembers how they burned. Sometimes with anger, sometimes with love- usually with both. He remembers loving that. Loving those beautiful, big brown eyes for what they did to him-

No. Clara's eyes are brown. He scolds himself out loud, hissing curses under his breath. River's eyes were not brown; River's eyes were…

Damn the regeneration. Damn the amnesia. Damn time for making this happen when it should never, ever be allowed to.

The easel breaks in half when it is smashed into the rotor. Sparks fly, the wood catches fire. It takes seven minutes to extinguish it, and by the end he is exhausted and so furious with himself that it's all he can do not to just curl up on the floor and cry.

He doesn't. That would be sentimental-idiot behaviour- just back from Darillium alone behaviour, and as he's discovered he is no longer that man.

Instead he leans with his back to the slightly charred console, takes a deep breath and his hands curl around the edges so he doesn't fall. If he falls, he isn't sure he'll get back up.

He doesn't like this one. He's decided. The memory is not _good enough_ and he is cold and rude and really quite unpleasant at times-

She would have absolutely loved him like this.

The realisation is like the nine hundred years of slowly dying at Trenzalore all in a second.

She'd probably inspect his new body first, make sure everything was in good working order; that was very her. Wasn't it? No, first she'd say something witty about his new chin or eyebrows. Or maybe she wouldn't say anything. She'd slap him. No, she'd kiss him. Maybe both. Maybe neither.

He doesn't know.

He has no idea, and it absolutely kills him.

When his brain starts to fall apart with the effort of attempting to remember, he instructs the Old Girl to put the voice interface on.

She gives him the right one first time. It flickers, but is more solid than the fragments of her in his head. So he takes a step forwards and allows himself to study her for the first time in nine hundred years.

Her eyes were green. He is sure he knew that. And the hair, he couldn't possibly forget the hair, ever. There was nothing like it in the entirety of the Cosmos.

He wants to touch it. It looks so very real that it takes his hand brushing through the holographic image for him to come crashing to his senses. Even then, as the emotionless face stares back at him and he knows that of course it is not her because she is dead and even when she was alive she always, _always_ held emotion on her face, but he still feels a need to confess. He always told her everything, after all.

"I'm forgetting you."

The interface doesn't speak. Why would it? It doesn't have an answer for everything like she did.

He wishes interfaces could smile. He wants to see her smile again, because he remembers what it did to him, that electric pulse through his nerves. The smile is gone and so is the feeling and he is _empty_.

He stares at it for longer than is probably healthy. Was her nose really like that? Had he even noticed? He must have at some point, but the memory, like her, had been lost to time.

Eventually the Tardis switches the interface off for him, and while he's grateful- he could have lost hours staring at nothing- the moment where the vision of her vanishes is almost enough to pull his new hearts from his new chest. The thought turns into a wish. Maybe a regeneration would render him more like the man who had married River and he would not feel so very far away from her.

He keeps wishing, of course. On the early nights he tries to remember, but as time crawls on and he is distracted by Clara and the Universe he starts to give up, slowly and then all at once.

* * *

She comes back less than a year after that. And he vows never to tell her what he had confided in the interface.

He plans to go along with everything, and it goes well. The façade is easy to keep up that night, because there are some things he has very much not forgotten about her which come as a welcome distraction. She initiates it, of course she does. He obliges because he is no longer the straitlaced man she fell in love with; a thousand years has pushed him so far past caring that he is not reserved.

He thinks that perhaps she has forgotten a little of him too. Because when he is sure she is too lost in throes of pleasure to be aware of it he lets himself cry, and afterwards he realises that the old River would have noticed. She always noticed.

It comforts him more than it should that they both seem to have lost sight of each other somewhere.

He lies. Not strictly; there are still some odd little things that he remembers, but when she's fast asleep next to him on their first night together a little battered object on the bedside table catches his eye.

Her diary. His cheat sheet.

He will not allow himself to sleep until he's read all of it. She talks about herself within it on a shockingly regular basis, which hardly surprises him.

By the last page he has a list of facts about her locked away in his head, ready for morning; admittedly, a good few he didn't even know before Darillium. And when she wakes he makes sure it's all perfect and he uses the first opportunity to roll the facts off his tongue as if he has never forgotten them.

She doesn't know he keeps her close for weeks on end because he is afraid he will forget her if he lets her leave.

She doesn't know that whenever he is gazing at her with a little smile plastered on his face he is not just admiring how beautiful she is. He is realising it for the first time, noticing so many things he did not realise he had forgotten.

She doesn't know he is telling her he loves her because he is trying to remind himself that this is how he feels.

Maybe if he tells her enough times, he believes, he'll convince himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A twist! Things were going far too well. But how long can he pretend they are?
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it, more to come x


	3. The Universe's Fairground

They lay face to face with as little distance between them as possible without breaking the laws of physics, something that had fast become a habit of theirs combined with soft murmurs and light strokes along each other's cooling skin.

"I'm picking Clara up tomorrow afternoon," the Doctor realised, running a hand though his hair that he had let grow into curls in the weeks his wife had spent with him.

"Oh." Her hand fidgeted in the grasp of his anxiously. "Do you want me to go? You can drop me off somewhere for a few days, there's a lovely hotel in Western Kestura I've been thinking of visiting," she mumbled quickly, eyes flickering downwards.

His eyebrows dipped. "Don't you want to stay here?"

The uncertainty in her voice was adorable. "I don't want to impose."

"You wouldn't be imposing." A reluctant smile found him. "She likes it when you're here. In fact, she says she prefers your company to mine because, and I quote, River never drones on for hours on end about types of biscuit."

She smirked, anxiety ebbing from her face with it. "Have you got anything planned for her?"

"Not particularly. I haven't really thought about it; I've been… otherwise occupied."

River raised an eyebrow at his grin. "Well, you'll have to think of something by tomorrow. Something tells me she won't be very happy if you give her that as an excuse."

"I will make plans." He smiled bashfully, running his thumb along her rosy cheek. "Do you have any ideas?"

She hummed to herself, eyes glazing over slightly as she slipped into thought. He loved to watch her this way; so many times had she had dissertations to write and he'd just sat and watched her, unusually still and non-fidgety for his previous incarnation, watching her marvellous mind at work as she tore mentally through the Universe.

He could see the moment an answer popped into her head. "How about the Armisces region of Tethron Seven?" It wasn't really a mere suggestion; he knew she was more than aware of the brilliance of her own ideas.

He gasped softly, marvelling at her. "Isn't it Armisces that plays host to the biggest fairground in the Universe?"

"Mm-hmm; as well as a circus, hourly magic shows and the most inexplicably delicious ice cream in any constellation."

Even the description brought a boyish grin to his face; he positively bounced next to her. "River, that's fantastic!"

"Obviously," she purred lazily, flipping onto her back and closing her eyes. "I make all the plans in this relationship."

He scoffed lightly, glaring eyes throwing daggers at her half-asleep corpse. "Then what do I bring to it?"

A sleepy smile ghosted across her face as she reached out a hand to ruffle his hair. "You, my dearest Doctor, you sit and look pretty."

He shouldn't have smiled at that. But he did.

* * *

"Are you sure you don't want to come with us?" the Doctor questioned for the umpteenth time as they hurtled through the vortex, for once not sloshing uselessly from side to side as they did when the Doctor was piloting.

" _Yes_ ," River said emphatically. "Stop asking. There's more than enough in here to keep me occupied."

"Well, if you're sure… tallest rollercoaster in the Universe is a very good opportunity to pass up…"

"I'm sure you'll have perfectly good fun without me."

He threw her a little sad smile. "What are you going to do all day?"

River puffed out a sigh, pushing feigned drama into her voice. "Well, I don't know; without you around to entertain me I'm not sure I'll be able to manage!" She smirked, kissing his scowl away. "Go and enjoy yourself, sweetie. I'll be waiting for you when you get back."

He grinned at the thoughts her words planted in his head. "I look forward to it. Oh, and before Clara gets here…"

He drew her into a kiss, hands getting lost in her maze of hair – he made sure they did something useful nowadays, rather than flailing like broken propellers by his side when the world dissolved into a blend of bright lights and stars at the touch of her lips.

He pulled away too soon for her liking, leaving her pinned against the console. "What was that for?"

"A goodbye," he replied solemnly, running his fingertips down her arms with a grace that made shivers pulse through her. "I thought I should make a habit of that. Just in case."

River smirked. "That's fine by me."

* * *

After four hours alone, River was draped on one of the study's sofas lost on her eleventh book when the slam of the Tardis doors made the walls shake.

She heard Clara first. "You could have warned me that the end of the rollercoaster involved being plunged head-first into a giant vat of mud!"

"That wasn't _part_ of the ride, Clara!" an exasperated voice replied, sounding equally vexed. River closed her book and pushed it to one side, trying not to smile as she climbed out of her chair to investigate. "It was winter there, winter equals mud, deal with it!"

Clara positively growled. "Doctor, if you tell me to _deal with_ something one more time, I swear-!"

"Oh my god!"

River's shocked exclamation snapped the two friends out of their argument. They looked truly pitiful, caked head to toe in gloopy brown sludge with resolute scowls written on their faces. "What on earth happened to you two?"

The Doctor bowed his head sheepishly. "We went to the fairground. It was lovely."

Clara scoffed. "Would have been lovelier without all the mud; but the Lord of Time here used all his understanding of the Universe to take us there in the middle of winter," she muttered darkly.

"You went in their winter? Oh, sweetie, it's a fairground that gets over two million visitors a day, of course it was going to be muddy!"

"Well, you could have warned me about that before!" he cried, mud flicking from his hands as he gestured at himself.

"Of course, it's never _your_ fault!" Clara cried, pouting at the Doctor and wrapping her arms around herself with a shiver.

"Alright," River soothed, peeling Clara's mud-soaked jacket from her shoulders. "It's nothing a shower won't fix. Go and get yourself cleaned up. You too," she instructed her husband, lowering her voice out of Clara's earshot. "I have things planned for tonight, and I'm not getting anywhere near close enough to you to do them when you're in that state."

* * *

"Hello handsome."

Even now, wandering into the room he had spent millennia alone in and finding himself greeted by his very own goddess was still the most beautiful of surprises, the kind which never failed to make the beats of his heats rise to a dizzying tempo.

In the five minutes the Doctor had occupied taking a shower and changing into non-mud drenched clothes, River had managed to get changed herself- or at least removed some layers, he wasn't sure- and lit candles that were now peppered around the bedroom smelling like meadows and casting a romantic glow upon her face.

The Doctor edged into the room just enough to slide the door closed behind him, keeping a wary distance. She had a very familiar look in her eye that made him feel like a gazelle in a lion enclosure. "You work quickly."

River smiled smugly, climbing off the bed and sashaying forwards to inspect him. "You should know that by now, sweetie. Oh, _that's_ better," she remarked, nodding approvingly as she smoothed his shirt and ran her hands through his clean hair. "I can do all sorts of things now."

"What did you have in mind?"

He was pinned up against the doorframe in response, caught in a fierce kiss that almost lifted him off his feet. Her grip on his hair intensified until he was certain that it would come away in clumps when she pulled back, so he was somewhat relieved to find himself still in one piece when she let him go. "That was… aggressive."

She raised an eyebrow, chest heaving with each breath she drew. "Complaining?"

"Of course not."

"Good." A devilish grin infected her face. "Guess what _I_ found!"

"What…" The hint of a smile on his face rapidly vanished as she lifted her hand, revealing a pair of handcuffs dangling from her fingertips. "Oh. It's been a while."

"Have you missed them?"

"Oh, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't."

He let her push him onto the bed, seeing that he really had little choice in the matter.

"Just relax, sweetie…"

"Says the woman with a torture instrument in her hands."  
River smiled sweetly. "Don't worry; I'm not going to use them."

"Now, when have I heard that before?"

"I promise."

Of course he didn't remotely believe her, but was past caring by the time she captured him in another kiss, her hands running down his arms to take hold of his wrists. He barely noticed her lifting them steadily above his head until a telling _click_ made her lift her head with a victorious smile. "I lied."

It had taken her less than thirty seconds to break her promise. He wriggled his hands uselessly in their restraints, gaining no leverage over the cuffs that she had managed to loop around the headboard and onto his wrists. Powerless to do anything else, he shot her a rather lackadaisical glare.

"Oh, come on; that was an _ancient_ move. You're not even trying to resist me."

"I've never been able to." His hearts floated up seeing the warmth spread across her face like a sunbeam at his comment, loving the ability to make her smile more than anything else.

She put on her best stranger-on-the-dance-floor voice. "You might want to find something to hang onto."

"This is still a relatively new body, so… be gentle."

River snorted, crawling closer to him. "I'll try."

"Colour me reassured."

His sarcastic mutters were silenced by his wife's mouth on his, but it had barely settled there when a sudden distant cry made them pull apart and exchange perplexed frowns.

"That wasn't you, was it?" River asked. The Doctor gave her a look. "I've known you to make stranger noises."

"It wasn't me. I think it was Clara downstairs…"

Another incoherent burst of shrieks floating through to them made River hop to her feet. "I'll go and see if she's alright."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, excuse me?" He tugged at his hands pointedly, raising his eyebrows at her.

A smirk curled up her lips. "I won't be long, sweetie."

"No. No. _River_! Get back here!"

* * *

"Just give it back! Every night you do this, it's getting old, ok, so just- just stop it, because I'm tired and I WANT MY BEDROOM!"

Her yelling provoked no reaction whatsoever, other than a hum from the Tardis console that sounded for all the world like laughter. Exasperated, Clara flopped onto the console seat with a frustrated grunt and pulled her knees up to her chin. "I hate you," she muttered darkly to the air around her.

The soft pad of footsteps roused her from her sulky staring competition with the console. "Doctor, your _stupid_ ship has hidden my-! Oh."

"Good evening." River raised an eyebrow at her from where she stood at the bottom of the staircase, a silky red dressing gown wrapped around her.

Clara cringed apologetically, biting her lip. "Sorry, did I wake you?"

River ran a hand through her wild hair with a wry smile. "No, I wasn't sleeping. What's the matter?"

"The Tardis is being a cow. Again."

River smirked, digging her hands in the pockets of her dressing gown as she sauntered over to the console.

"Where's the Doctor?"

"He's a bit… tied up right now," River muttered casually, flicking a couple of levers on the console to no avail. "Not that he'd be able to help in any case. He doesn't even know what to do when she's working, and you know dreadfully how he copes with emotions; the mood swing of a spaceship is no exception. Whoa, ok," River cooed softly, brow furrowing in confusion as the Tardis shuddered under her touch. "What's got into you, hmm? Are we having a tantrum again?"

"Sorry… this keeps happening." Clara chewed her thumbnail restlessly, glowering at the rotor.

"It's not your fault. She's not very keen on you," River remarked.

"You don't say. Any idea why? At first I thought it might have been because I was the first girl he'd brought back…"

River guffawed dramatically, eyes glittering with laughter. "Oh, sweetie, bless you."

"Yeah, she shot that idea down in flames."

"Ah. Did she give you the slide show?"

"Yep. Is it me, or were they all…?"

"Alarmingly attractive?" she finished, humming in agreement.

"There was one with legs longer than me!"

"That would be my mother." River flinched when an attempt to get the scanner working resulted in an angry spark hissing from the console. "Alright! My, you can sulk, I'll give you that! You're worse than your thief. And that's saying a lot." Her eyebrows shot up when a metallic groan echoed around her. "Don't you talk back to me! I don't care if you're my mother; I'm the pilot, you're the machine. I'm in charge."

She heard Clara chuckle behind her. "I thought the Doctor was the only one who did that. Be careful; you're starting to sound the same."

"God help me…" River traced her fingers over the console lightly, letting a fond smile flit across her face safely out of anyone else's view. "Well, what can I say? I've known him far too long." Giving up, she wandered over and flopped onto the seat next to Clara who seemed to be studying her.

"I wanted to say, actually… he's been- different, since you came back, you know. In a good way," her husband's friend remarked with a wistful smile. "Before, when he first regenerated, he was a bit- difficult."

"Oh, you don't have to be delicate. I know how much of a complete dick he can be," River grinned.

Clara's giggle effervesced through the console room. "Well, yeah. But he's different with you. It's still a bit weird that he's capable of keeping a wife, to be honest, but it's sweet. It's nice to see him happy, after Trenzalore and everything."

River hummed, ignoring the painful twang of her heart at the mention of that godforsaken place. She imagined for a moment that it must have been how the Doctor felt each time the Library was brought up, but had to push this realisation to one side when it became pressure enough to shatter her composure.

"You're really close, aren't you; not like human couples are. Well, not that I've ever seen."

"We've been through a _lot_ ; including a thousand years and both of our deaths." River shot Clara a wan smile. "I don't think many human couples can say that. And he can't have changed that much, really," she shrugged, playing it down because her hands were starting to shake at the thought of having such an influence over him. "He'd known me for a long time when he met you anyway."

"I know, but there's just something that's changed since he got you back. He used to have this look, these big sad eyes; sometimes I'd catch him on his own and he'd just look so… I don't know, lost? Even after he regenerated, there was just something so unhappy about him."

"Well, he's lost a lot of people," River reminded her gently.

"Yeah, but the thing is… he never has that now, and it's since you've come back. The way he is with you, I've never seen that before in him. And I've been through his timestream, so I've _literally_ seen his whole life." She grinned. "He talks about you all the time, you know. Even before Trenzalore the first time, he used to tell me about all his adventures with Professor Song, the time-travelling archaeologist."

River smiled bashfully, feeling uncharacteristically embarrassed. It was awfully strange talking about their relationship, because she could finally call it that, so intimately with someone who wasn't the Doctor or her parents. Even discussing it with them had been a stretch.

There was something about Clara, something that made the jealousy and hostility she was supposed to feel ebb away without a second thought. "Good things, I hope."

"Oh, always." Clara grinned. "Actually, I asked him about you while we were looking for you. He was getting a bit hopeless, so I thought it might do him some good to remember what he was searching for. God, once I got him started! He said so many sweet things about you. In fact… I remember once, he said you were the love of his life."

Her heart swelled until it pressed against her throat. "He said _what_?"

Clara bit her lip, assumingly seeing the intense glisten in River's eyes when her head whipped up involuntarily. "I don't know if I was strictly supposed to tell you that. He must have told you though? You've been together ages. Literally ages…"

"Yeah, he… I… um." She rubbed her temple with her fingertips, trying to force herself into composure.  
Clara's eyebrows dipped anxiously. "Sorry- I just assumed you knew, the way he… are you alright?"

"Oh, god, yeah… sorry," she answered quickly, rising to her feet abruptly to hide the pools in her eyes. "There's just something I need to do. And you; give Clara her bedroom back or I'll put the shields down and fly you through a supernova."

* * *

The Doctor almost passed out with sheer relief when he heard feet padding down the corridor to the bedroom where he resided helplessly, wriggling his foot with a wince; it had developed quite a severe cramp from attempting to reach his sonic, placed infuriatingly- and very deliberately- just out of reach of his toes on the dresser.

River slipped inside the room silently less than a minute later, stopping just inside the door and seeming to take a deep, shuddering breath before mooching over at a maddeningly leisurely pace to where he sat trapped, throwing her the beginnings of a vexed lecture.

He glared at her the moment she appeared, trying his best to keep his cross face on even though in truth he had enjoyed it far more than he was ever going to admit. "That wasn't funny, River! You were gone almost an hour, why do you _insist_ on torturing-"

She suddenly cut him off with a deep and bruising kiss, hands winding through his hair and gripping onto his curls until they were both rendered breathless.

He eyed her with a wary frown, lips swollen from her when she pulled away wordlessly with tears gleaming in her eyes. "What was that for?"

River didn't answer, reaching up to release his hands from the cuffs and tracing her fingers along the red marks they had left on his wrists tenderly. "Oh, look at you. I'm sorry," she whispered.  
"You're _apologising_ , for putting me in handcuffs…?" He scrambled to sit up straight, searching her eyes as if trying to determine whether or not she was possessed. "Are you feeling alright?"

He smiled, hoping to lighten the solemn expression on her face, but to no avail. "River, what's the matter?" he whispered.

"I was talking to Clara about you," she admitted coyly, still cradling his wrists in her hands.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, and… Clara told me something that you said about me-"

She smiled weakly when he immediately lapsed into defence mode. " _What_? Well- she's obviously lying. I've never said a bad word about you! Well, I may have- ok, I _may_ have called you bossy, and- scary, a couple of times, but I didn't mean it, and really they're not bad things, I like that you're bossy! Hang on." He relaxed, smiling smugly at his own deduction abilities. "You kissed me, so it must be something good. Go on."

"She said you told her, that… I was the love of your life."

"Oh." He nodded his head, a coy smile on his face. "Yes, I did."

River seemed to draw further inwards at his admittance, shaking her head slowly. He watched her throat bob as she swallowed a lump in it with some difficulty. "Why would you say that?"

"It was a joke."

His innocent reply made River's eyes pop. He made a point of laughing, albeit nervously, seeing her hands curl into fists. "I'm sorry. _That_ was a joke."

She curled her tongue into her cheek, glaring at him. "You're _so_ funny."

"I know; it's a burden." He took hold of her thankfully relaxed hands once more, pressing kisses to the backs of them.

River shook her head. "Sarcasm aside, did you mean it?"

"Yes." He paused for a moment, raising an eyebrow at her. "Is that alright with you?"

"It might be."

He persisted in studying her, seeing something lingering behind her smile. "I'm not convinced."

River sighed a little, prising her hands out of his and making a point of avoiding his searching eyes. "Of course it's alright, sweetie. Now, where did I put those handcuffs?"

* * *

She knows that he still wasn't quite reassured, if the way he gazed at her was anything to go by; but she persisted in concealing the truth, distracting him in the most delicious of ways until whatever inkling he may have had that something was not quite right vanished.

She has grown used to hiding things, after all.


	4. Two Hearts and Faces

He is quite sure that those words never left his lips. But of course, he'd rather lie and save her feelings than the alternative.

Then again, Clara has no reason to lie, especially that way. Perhaps he did say it once, when in a flash of a moment one of his last remaining memories had bubbled to the surface.

He has been training himself. Not just to behave as he thinks she wants him to behave, but to feel what she wants him to be feeling, too.

Guilt does that. If she knew what his thoughts truly were, corrupted with uncertainty and foggy memories that he'd tricked her into believing were clear, he would never see her again.

He doesn't want that. Her presence does things to him which he hadn't previously known he was capable of experiencing. He cares for her deeply, and truly believes he loves her in his own way despite the fact that he has to keep revising from her diary and re-learning the features of her face when time like poison eats away at yet more memories.

He isn't sure more than any other time than when she looks at him; he never was. Those eyes had always caused such uncertainty; he believed, still believes, he will never have eyes that burn with sheer adoration like that.

Still, it's hardly as if he gives her nothing. He makes sure he treats her right, because he knows what her whole life has been and he knows that it is something she never had. More, he knows that it was because of him. And it is in his nature, remaining despite the really rather drastic changes that regeneration has brought about, to correct his mistakes. Whether it is out of love for her or to ease his own guilt, he doesn't know and doesn't dare ask himself.

And the nights, oh, the nights. He never wants them to end.

She'd been right, on all the times she had tried to coax him into it when he was younger; it was underrated. Not just the seeing-stars exhilaration but the comfort, the healing, the ability to forget all other matter in the entirety of the Cosmos for a few heady minutes.

But it is more than that. She'd always considered him as a bit of a prude, but at the end of the day he's a very old man in a comparatively young body, and though he rarely shows it he knows exactly how to please; so he proves her considerations wrong and then some.

He shows her because he feels he has to. Because he owes it, because he has a thousand years of letting himself forget her to make up for, because it is the closest to her he can get and when they are sharing skin and hot laboured breath he does not feel like she is slipping irretrievably through his fingers.

She does nothing to instigate that feeling, so it is not her fault. He would assure her of that, had he not ensured that she was blissfully unaware of the feeling in the first place. In fact, there is not really anything short of perfection in the time they stay still, so in due course it occurs to him that perhaps he is simply paranoid. He has every right to be, damn it, after all that has happened in his curse of a life.

There was a time, an eternity ago for him now when he would not have even considered touching her, particularly with this frame of mind which abandoned honourable intentions and ignored doubts. But now he is so far past being concerned about being a good man after so long questioning it that he doesn't care, and has a feeling that she doesn't either because neither of them ever speak.

It is strange how alike her he has realised he is. It comforts him, in a way, because it means that somewhere within himself he still remembers her, or at least that she was still with him when he changed.

He's aware, fully, of how contradictory he is. Sometimes he is so utterly in love with her that it physically hurts him. Sometimes, he can sit and watch her for hours on end, whisper to her and laugh at her jokes and it is like the old days only better. But there is always, _always_ that sensation rattling around in his head, the niggling reminder that he did let himself forget her and all the love in the Cosmos will not change that, and perhaps it is telling him something. Perhaps he is wasting his time because likelihood is she will be taken from him just as he has re-carved her onto his mind. He stops thinking at this point before he snaps, drops her off somewhere and never goes back.

He keeps on going, days and nights and normality, telling himself that it is just that and it is not pretence.

He amazes himself with how skilled he has become at lying. He is no longer even honest with himself.

* * *

_One year earlier_

* * *

Back saving the world, only a matter of hours into regeneration. No rest for the wicked, as they say. He thinks they say that. Truth be told, he's spent so long in isolation that there is no longer a boundary between memory and fantasy.

At least he has people around him… people he knows, apparently, though they're only faintly recognisable to him like he saw them in a film as a child. They keep telling him he has amnesia- whatever that is, he's adamant that he does not have it, he is absolutely fine- and they're trying to look after him and he does not like it. He doesn't need looking after. He needs to run around and save things and see the _Universe_ , in all its glittering glory. That's what he does. Isn't it?

The green scaly lady is saying something. He's just been telling her off for going to rescue her girl- Jenny, they call her. She could have died saving her. What a waste that would have been.

She seems shocked when he says that. What does she expect him to do, waste time caring about people when there are worlds to save? "Doctor, there was no alternative," she declares. He rolls his eyes at her sentimentality. "Surely you of all people must know the lengths one will go to in order to protect their spouse?"

"Why?" he snaps. "How would I possibly know about that?"

"Well, you _were_ married in your previous incarnation," Vastra states, the words sending him into a spin.

He shakes his head impatiently, eyes blazing because why aren't they listening to him? Why are they treating him as if he's missing something? He is over two thousand years old. He does not miss things. "I don't what you're talking about. I was never married in my last body."

He sees something flash in the people surrounding him, as if a little light has just burned out, and wonders briefly what is wrong before deciding that he doesn't care.

Vastra's voice is serene, as if she's some sort of therapist. He doesn't understand; if anything they're the ridiculous ones, making up silly stories just to mess with his new head. "I'm afraid I beg to differ."

He sighs loudly. "I think I would remember being married, Vastra!"

They all stare at him as if he's gone utterly insane, as they have been for the majority of this day.

Clara is the one to step forwards, eyes wide and sad for a reason he doesn't yet know.

"Doctor…" she starts slowly. He watches her swallow a lump in her throat; she's almost crying and he frowns at her perplexedly until she utters a single word. " _River_."

Something pops inside him. He thinks it might be his soul detaching from the rest of him because it's given up, and his hand covers his mouth to stop it escaping. Clara's still looking at him; he assumes he isn't the only one severely judging himself at this moment in time.

He feels tears fill his eyes and blinks them away. There isn't time for this. "Ok… you may have been right about the amnesia."

He finds himself praying, _praying_ , before he can stop himself, that it is merely a temporary side-effect of regeneration. That or he will not be able to live with himself.

"River… was that the one with the colossal head?"

"Shut up, Strax."

The Doctor's hand drops from his mouth to clasp with the other imploringly. "Please don't tell her about that. She'll kill me if she finds out."

Clara's eyes press themselves shut. Jenny is the one to speak; she sounds ridiculously gentle, and he wants to shout at her. He isn't a child. "Doctor… she died over a thousand years ago."

"Oh." He pauses for a moment, drawing his bottom lip between his new teeth and clamping down on it. "I knew that."

And he wishes his new body was born eradicated of feelings because he's feeling the unbearable pain for the first time all over again and it hurts more than anything he's ever known.

When he picks his new outfit he makes sure there is a ring put onto his finger because he needs to remember that married is something that he used to be.

He'll never tell a soul.


	5. The Dancer and the Patchwork Man

Morning was his favourite time of day. He would wake up, always, tangled up in her in some way; his fingers twined through hers or her leg hooked around his hip or his hands matted almost beyond redemption in her hair. On the rare times he opened his eyes to find her turned away from him he would press relentless kisses to everywhere he could reach, her neck and back and shoulders until she flipped over sleepily in response, snuggling into him with a purr and a lazy smile.

She was full of music, filling every silence with her own sweet rendition of old songs so beautifully that he wondered if he'd ever be able to cope with silence again. The Tardis was full of echoes of her voice that floated through to him wherever he happened to be, refrains about walking on sunshine and birds flying high and making love that put a spring in his soul.

River didn't just sing, of course; she had always loved to dance. She seemed barely capable of going anywhere without throwing in a little quickstep or twirl.  
He loved catching her dancing on her own. She'd stop halfway through a pirouette and notice him in the doorway; a huge smile would burst across her face, and she would shimmy over to him to take his hands and pull him into a waltz around the room. She would sing to him as they swayed, and when he drew her into a kiss she'd persist in humming the melody against his lips until she became too otherwise occupied to remember the rest.

Several weeks in, the sheer vision of her could still stir him senseless; his craving for her was bordering on the best disease he'd ever had. Though apparently, she still liked to check that this was the case.

He was coming up from the kitchen, whistling a tune he'd caught from her as he dawdled down the corridor. Just as he was approaching the bathroom door, it swung open and River padded out in front of him wrapped only in a fluffy white towel tied tightly around her frame, clinging to her exquisite curves.

Either it was a glorious coincidence, or she had timed it. Knowing her, he mused, it was very probably the latter.

"Hello."

Her voice was an invitation. He didn't know how he'd ever managed to resist it. She threw him an almost sadistic smile as if knowing exactly what she was doing to him, and before he could stop his hands they were meandering around her waist, sliding up to tangle in her damp hair. "Hello."

He drew her into an ardent kiss, relishing the way she melted against him as she always did until their very souls seemed to intertwine.

She attempted to walk them backwards but in a flash her wet feet skidded on the floor and sent her propelling backwards, crashing to the floor and bringing him with her. He landed on top of her clumsily, hearing the awful crack as her head ricocheted off the metal. She cried out, clutching her head with a heavy groan. "Oh, River!" he cried, panicked as he scrambled off her and hauled her to her feet. "Are you alright, does it hurt?"

He held her up in his arms, peering at her anxiously until her shoulders began to shake, her head still bowed and buried in her hands. "Oh, River, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to…"

His wife lifted her head, making him trail off with a bemused frown. Her eyes were watery from the impact but she was lost in bubbly hysterics, her giggles taking the weight from his chest.

"Are you ok?" he asked, holding her face up in his hands.

"I'm fine, sweetie," she answered through snorts of laughter, rubbing the back of her head with a wince. "At least you're keen. I don't think I've ever used hello has ever worked as a pick up line, although I'm guessing the towel had something to do with that…"

"It's not my fault you're so irresistible," he answered solemnly, tucking her hair behind her ears and cradling the back of her head comfortingly.

"Keep jumping on me and I won't be," she warned.

He gaped at her incredulously. "I did not jump on you! You slipped."

River smirked. "Is that the story you're going with?"

"The _true_ story?" he reminded her, raising an eyebrow. "Yes."

"Whatever you say, dear," she smirked. "Now if you can manage to keep your hands off me long enough so I can get ready, that would be lovely."

He scowled at her playfully, letting her saunter away from him with swishing hips. He watched without acting on the pang of longing in his chest, knowing that realistically he'd have to let her go at some point. Her name suited her so very perfectly, and like it she had to run free.

It used to be much easier to let her do so, he mused, half irritated at his lack of control and half in admiration of her, her ability to render him like this.

This new body of his, he'd realised, was patchwork. It had been apparent from the moment he'd opened his mouth to complain about his ridiculous kidneys, of course- there was no mistaking from whom he'd inherited the Scottish twang. But then there were the flashes; the sheer audacity. The fierce temper. On occasions, the possessiveness- some might even have dubbed it jealousy. The way his new silvery hair kinked into loopy curls. The occasions where a flirtatious remark would pop off his tongue before he could catch it were the most telling; it hadn't taken him very long to realise who this new body had designed itself for. It had ached beyond description when within the same second of this epiphany he was forced to remind himself that she was no longer around to fit the mould he'd shaped.

That was far from the case now, of course. He smiled at the thought. Things, for once in his life, were as they should be.

"Do you think it would be socially acceptable to go to a restaurant naked?"

He smiled warmly at her remark as she popped her head around the bedroom door, startling him from his ruminations wearing nothing but her own golden skin. "It depends on the restaurant."

That dirty laugh of hers reverberated off the corridor walls.

"Why?"

River sighed, twirling a curl around her fingers and pulling at it with a sulky pout. "I can't find a stitch to wear."

His eyebrows shot up incredulously. "Are you being funny? You have more clothes than I do on here."

She took a moment to study him, eyes narrowing ever so slightly. "And _you_ haven't moved since I left you." Her eyes glittered in amusement, arms folding across her chest as she propped herself up against the doorframe to watch him in some form of silent interrogation.

"I was just thinking."

"About?"

In the old days he would have lied; named any scientific process in the known Universe, a kind of hat or biscuit, just to avoid the squirming blushes that would grip him whenever he was dragged into a conversation containing even the mildest flirtation. It was disgraceful, really- knowing billions of languages and somehow managing to forget every single one whenever she was in his vicinity.

But in this body, there was none of that. It had been designed for River Song- of course there wasn't.

"You."

River cocked a sculpted eyebrow, a victorious smile dancing along her face. "I should hope so."

* * *

He has never lived like this before.

Of course he's used to lying; his life is built upon lies. Their relationship sits upon the same foundations, to the point where he wonders if really they'd be capable of functioning within the boundaries of honesty.

But this isn't lying, not really. It's something next to what lying is, he decides; close but not quite the same.

It's false. The love is real; the passion is without question real, shockingly so- in fact it's about the only thing that doesn't come and go in waves. He wonders if it is a smokescreen from her point of view as well as his, but doesn't dwell on that. He has spent a thousand years dwelling and he'll be damned if he's going to do it some more.

But even with all that, it is false. He _feels_ it. She doesn't- he hopes. But the upkeep of pretence, both with her _I couldn't possibly forget anything about you River_ and inside his own head _things are exactly as they should be_ taints everything.

He's good at it; when he's with her his mind slips into the sleepy haze of belief that everything is right and perfect once again. And it is. It ought to be; this is all he's ever wanted, isn't it?

It's been a few weeks, and so there are things he is starting to remember. How many years he sat on that cloud and cried for her, how many nights he wished, _wished_ so hard that he could burst, that she was next to him.

It seems a shame, but that's the way of the Universe. Good things come along when you no longer want them.

It's not as if he doesn't want her there. It is pleasant enough and when he's with her, oh, it is paradise. When he is with her his conscience shifts and all over again there are the sensations of butterflies and eagerness and even affection. He finds that he loves many things about her, in a pure and untainted sort of way; patches of their life are not blurred by his doubts. But the doubt persists and no matter how many mornings he wakes up and drinks her in and realises that she is _brave_ and _clever_ and so _beautiful_ , the moment she leaves the room or merely turns her back it all pops like an illusion.

And reminding himself constantly is beginning to feel ever so tiring.

* * *

They go to dinner- his idea, because really they can only stay still for so long before driving themselves insane. He is rather proud, though surprised, that he has managed it thus far- though he knows that had his purpose of remaining starless not been a desperate attempt to remember the woman who was supposed to be his wife, he would not have succeeded.

Eventually, she selects an old dress from the wardrobe that shimmers golden and he tells her that she looks beautiful because she does. She wears her hair down and the honey curls seem to blend with the dress as they fall about her shoulders so that she is the very vision of a goddess.

But there is something wrong. He doesn't show it, of course he doesn't, he never does- but it feels like a niggling sensation of doubt at the back of his head, manifesting with all the others.

They are eating dinner by the time he realises. She's chatting about something and he forces his face to remain plastered with a polite smile even though there are pools of dread collecting in his eyes because _it's the same dress._ The same dress from their last night together, the night the towers sang, and the horrific thing is that he can only scarcely remember her in it the first time.

Nevertheless, what is left of the memory comes back in a painful rush and he wonders, is this always what things will be like? Constant flickers returning like elapsed nightmares?

It's a good thing he has forgotten things, if this is what remembering is going to do to him.

He's quiet at dinner, basking in terrible thoughts and _how could I forget anything about Darillium. Of all places and times. Darillium_ until she asks what's wrong. He tells her it's nothing and that appeases her for a while. They eat dinner and she's talking about another time he took her to a restaurant and he forces himself not to listen because _you reprogrammed the waiter android to only serve fish fingers and custard, remember?_ And it reminds him that not only does he not remember that date or any others, he did not remember liking fish custard and when he is reminded of it he realises how much of himself he has allowed to become lost.

As the evening progresses he draws further into himself, so it's inevitable that when they return to the Tardis she persists in asking what the matter is.

And so the frontage returns; it's easy, really. He can't help himself. When she assumes that the dress brings back painful memories instead of none at all, he doesn't correct her.

In fact, he goes along with it, even when it leads to their first argument as a linear couple.

He is very convincing.


	6. The Darillium Dress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As told in the previous chapter, the Darillium dress complex... deception is at work. Is there any truth left in their marriage? Well, it's River and the Doctor; that's anyone's guess. More developments to come.

He nodded at her, running a hand through his hair. "That's the dress you wore to Darillium."

Her hands flew to her mouth. "Oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry, I completely forgot!"

"No, it's- don't apologise. I'm being silly. It's just that… whenever I look at you, the memory comes back; it's like I'm back at our last day again. I know it's irrational; just… that day was all I had to hang onto for so long, and- it's hard not to think about when you look exactly like you did that night, that's all." He sighed to himself, smiling apologetically. "Am I being a sentimental idiot?"

"No, sweetie. I understand." Her hands trailed to the zip on the back of her dress, pulling it down in one deft movement. She kept her eyes sealed in his as she slipped out of it, letting it fall off her shoulders and pool at her feet. "Is this better?"

He swallowed, drinking in the sight of her in an attempt to erase the noxious thoughts of last days and terrible secrets.

"I know this isn't the same underwear from Darillium, because I bought it especially for tonight." She smiled coyly, smoothing her hands over the lace. "Tardis blue, see!"

He tried a smile, but couldn't make it reach his eyes when he knew that she could see straight through him anyway. "Doctor?" she prompted gently, stepping over her dress to come closer to him and place a gentle hand on the side of his face. "Sweetie, please. You're looking at me like you did that night."

He forced his eyes away, and felt her rest her head on his shoulder wearily. "I don't know what to say to you, Doctor," she whispered. "This isn't Darillium night; all of that is behind us." Her hands caressed his back tentatively. "I'm _here_."

He felt her sigh, and wondered what on earth he was doing wasting his time sulking when she was in his arms, alive and beautiful and wearing lace suspenders. "I know you are. I'm sorry," he murmured into her shoulder, wrapping her up in his arms. "For ruining our first date."

She smirked against his shirt. "It's not even _near_ our first date, honey. And given that on our actual first date I was shot by Hitler and then poisoned you to death, I wouldn't say it was that bad." She traced his spine with the tips of her fingers, pressing her nose into his neck. "I wish you'd tell me things."

"I do," he retaliated, sounding a little wounded. "I tell you more than I tell anyone, River; you know that. You're the only one in the whole of time and space who knows my name."

"I know, sweetie. But I mean, I wish you'd tell me when there's something wrong."

He tucked his nose into her hair, letting his eyes flicker closed. "I'm just used to… not being able to. With the timelines, hiding the damage was usually a necessity to avoid paradoxes."

"But it isn't now," River reminded him. "If you'd said something, I could have put on a different dress and you'd have had a much better evening. Still… it's not over yet." She pulled his shirt back to press a kiss above his collarbone. "Let me make it up to you. And because this is _not_ Darillium night, I'll make it up to you again in the morning."

Her fingers wound through the hair at the nape of his neck to pull him into a kiss, but all it did was remind him of that fateful last date when he had tried to kiss her back, tried to make her feel loved because it was last chance while clinging onto his last thread of composure.

He pulled away from her before he could think, and her hands fell away from him. "What's the _matter_ with you? God, it's like being in the wrong order again!"

"Exactly," he murmured, seeing the hurt and confusion written across her face that he had last seen when he'd cried at the singing towers.

She pressed a hand to her forehead tiredly. "Doctor, I'm really trying here. All I did was wear an old bloody dress; I don't deserve this!"

"No! You don't, I'm sorry, I…"

"You need to get past this, do you understand? I'm not a ghost anymore!" she cried, tears glittering in her eyes.

"River, please, don't…"

"I'm going to bed," she muttered sulkily, picking up her dress and slinging it over her shoulder before throwing a glance back at him. "You know, there's no point in us having a future if you're going to let our past ruin it. I'll see you in the morning."

* * *

The next morning was the first time he awoke not wrapped up in the warmth of her, the first time he couldn't kiss her and whisper to her until she woke up. He had crawled into bed in the twilight hours only when sure that she was too lost in sleep to stop him, and lain purposely on the very edge of the mattress for fear of what touching her might do.

When morning came he waited for her to wake, gazing at her sleeping face with cold guilt curdling in the pit of his stomach and planning just how he was going to make up the disaster that was last night up to her.

It took another two hours and forty nine minutes for her eyes to open, and when they did they proceeded to glare at him with such intense ferocity that he almost shrivelled into a pile of ash. After an agonising moment, he closed the tormenting distance between them by cupping her chin gently, seeing softness melt her emerald eyes for just long enough to give him hope.

It didn't last. She drew herself away from him, clambering out of bed and pulling on her dressing gown without throwing him a second glance. "I'm getting some coffee."

"I could have made-" The slam of the bedroom door cut off the rest of his attempt at reconciliation.

* * *

River had a feeling he would follow her. She put the spoon down with an impatient sigh as he came to stand behind her in the Tardis kitchen, splaying his fingers out in the curves of her hips and resting his chin on her shoulder. "I'm so sorry," he murmured. "You looked so beautiful last night, you always do, and it was an amazing night; I'm an idiot for wasting it, I'm an idiot who doesn't deserve you. I love you- I know it mustn't seem like I do, but on my lives, I _do_ , River. Now, please let me make you coffee."

River angled her head to meet his eyes, and he threw her a hopeful smile. "It's the least I can do."

She stepped to the side, letting him finish the coffee and watching with folded arms. "If it puts your mind at rest, I threw the dress into a supernova."

He sighed, rubbing his chin anxiously and sliding the mug over to her. "You didn't have to do that."

"Yes I did. You realise it's going to take a little more than coffee to make last night up to me, don't you?"

Sensing a little thaw in the hostility, he nodded with dizzying eagerness which brought a weak smirk to her face. "Yes! Yes, I do." He clasped his hands together imploringly. "Where can I start?"

It only took her a second to swipe her arm across the kitchen bench, sending everything on it clattering onto the kitchen tiles and making him jump.

His wide eyes cast over the blizzard of coffee and sugar littering the floor as he swallowed a lump of anxiety and slight fear in his throat. "Do you want me to clean that up?" he asked uncertainly, wondering if there was some form of solar flare nearby that was making her a little insane.

His gaze flitted up from the massacre to her and became stuck. She had hopped up onto the empty bench, reclining ever so slightly with her hands splayed out behind her as she arched an eyebrow at him pointedly.

"Ah."

Letting her drag him into a kiss and pull him against the bench to wrap her legs around his waist, he made a mental note to infuriate her more often.

* * *

He should feel terrible. But he doesn't.

Because as long as he has her close to him, he can only feel content.

It's ironic given that it's the one thing she can no longer feel when they are together. But this irony lies dormant beneath the thin surface of normality and deception, blissfully unnoticed.

Waiting.


	7. Matter of Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time for a new chapter. We know how the Doctor feels... but what about River?

He hears her before he sees her.

He's been looking, striding down endless corridors that all look the same to the extent that he starts to believe the Old Girl is trying to put space between them until the sound of her stops him in his tracks from pure shock.

She's crying. He knows before he rounds the corner, to find himself in her old study where she used to spend hours finishing archaeological dissertations after warning him that if he dared disturb her _on your own head be it, sweetie_ , and his deduction is confirmed by a little trembling figure in front of the fireplace, silhouetted by the dying embers within it that tell him she has been here a while.

He almost calls out, asks what's wrong, because she rarely cries. He remembers that about her, at least. She is incredibly strong, or at least she pretends to be.

But he stops himself, because it took him over twenty minutes to find her which means that this, what he's watching her do now, is hiding. And when he edges further into the doorway to see more of her, he understands why.

She is curled up on one of the velvet chairs, a tweed jacket strewn across her knee. It takes him a moment to recognise it; by the time he does River has her face buried in the fabric, crying quietly into it, and he wants to shout at her because it's a good jacket and she's getting it all soggy and very probably smearing her make-up all over it.

He doesn't, remembering it is not something that the kind of man he is pretending to be for her sake would do. Besides, a moment later the undying love for his clothes subsides because _I haven't worn that jacket since_

Something snaps into place inside his head. She's smoothing the sleeves as if his old self is still wearing it and oh, he knows that look on her face.

_Doctor… please tell me you know who I am._

_Who are you?_

He knew that day, how those three words had been like bullets to her heart. Poorly concealed dread had seeped into her features and she had spent the rest of that awful, awful day gazing at him with a sort of nostalgia, as if silently, forlornly contemplating everything that had ended with those words; the way she was gazing down at his old jacket at this moment.

And everything falls away, their very own pocket universe crumbling at the edges because everything he is consists of _as long as River is happy_ and suddenly there is no reason for the façade upon which he sits.

He's different now. He _knows_ that. He feels it every day, and that swirled with time makes him selfish and cold. But he thought that if there was one exception, one thing that he could at least put up with pretending to be something else for, it could have been River.

He is the hoper of far-flung hopes, always has been- the dreamer of improbable dreams. And he knows that this could work; both of them keeping up different fairytales, or as grown-ups call them, lies. But his are to please her and he knows that hers are to satisfy him and neither of them is pleased or satisfied.

Seeing the futility of everything they are makes tears pool in his eyes to match hers because it is horribly sad. It's sad that this is what they've ended up as after everything- one of them crying while the other watches unobserved, so very far from each other.

He turns on his heel and leaves her there without making a sound, because he doesn't know what else he can do.

* * *

She hated herself for being so pathetic.

She was River Song. She was his wife, for god's sake- she wasn't _supposed_ to care.

But she did. She tried not to, of course- living in memories was a dangerous thing- but she could never quite help flicking back through the diary, finding one of his old jackets that still lingered with the old scent of jam biscuits and sugar and losing herself in it.

It was the bloody tangled timelines that she blamed. She'd grown so used to looking forward to that stupid baby face and bow tie because he was the man who knew her, the man who was her husband. Though of course she'd never show it, because of course she couldn't, seeing other faces had filled her with dread. The Library had confirmed that more than anything else.

Even without the new face, which she could have grown accustomed to, the matter of time made it all so horribly difficult. It had been so very long for him, more than enough time to change anyone. Given all that had happened to him in those years it was little surprise that he was almost beyond recognition.

She never thought she'd miss those days, and hated herself for doing so. But what were they, now? They had always been at the far end of the normality spectrum before, but at least they'd been happy back then.

The worst thing was that he _was_ happy. And god, he loved her. He even _said_ it now.

It wasn't that she didn't love him back. She wasn't unhappy, either- not by any standards.

But when she had discovered this new man living her husband's life, she'd assumed that she would no longer have a part within it. And with that assumption she'd felt relief.

She was confused, to say the least. There were times she absolutely adored him, new face and all, to the extent that she wondered if she'd have felt this uneasy had she found him before Trenzalore. Because even at the best of times, even in the mornings where she'd wake up to find he'd got up, cooked her breakfast and left it under a cosy on the bedside table before climbing back under the covers just to be there to say good morning to her, there was still hat horrible niggling sensation that something was different- and not good different.

The thought that he was with her because he felt he had to be had always terrified her. She'd never brought it up because, of course, she couldn't- all she'd be met with was _of course I'm not, River, I love you, River, I'm with you because I want to be, River, it's always been you, River_ , among other mawkish barefaced lies. She knew that now it was more likely to be true than ever- she'd died because of him; of course he'd feel obligated to love her. Perhaps it was the fear of being a wife out of sympathy that was causing her to have moments of desperate unhappiness.

But she could smile. She could conjure up a flirtatious remark or throw him a look that had always been able to make him go weak at the knees, and stave off the agitation for a few more minutes each time. With luck, it often led to things which could make her forget about all the problems in the Universe, and she was sure that if they just stayed this way then she would be more than capable of keeping up the pretence.

He didn't have to know.

He didn't have to know that she lost hours with her nose buried in his old clothes, or that whenever he smiled at her all she could think about was how much she missed his old puppyish lopsided grin.

He didn't have to know that on the nights when she squeezed her eyes shut tightly she was concentrating until she could almost feel the floppy quiff of chocolate hair tickling her forehead.

But she couldn't keep her eyes closed forever.

* * *

"Is Clara still coming tomorrow?"

Her voice is all bouncy and joyful. _False_ , he thinks, _all of it. All of this_ , flicking a lever he doesn't know the purpose of with more ferocity than originally intended. "Why wouldn't she be?"

She's referring to the meal they have planned for the next day; another stab at playing happy families, apparently. Clara will make her own version of food and husband and wife will joke on as if all is right in the order of the Universe.

What's the point in pleasantries anymore? Neither of them wants to be here.

What a mess all of this is. He checks the monitor even though for billions upon billions of miles they are surrounded by nothing at all because he can't look at her now.

She's sauntering over to him, all wild bed curls and silky pyjamas. "Well, I know what the helmic regulator can be like after you've played with it." She grins with that full smile of hers, all perfect teeth and velvety lips. He glances away, breaking what has become eye contact between the two of them because he doesn't _want_ to want her.

"The helmic regulator is fine. I've told you."

"That's because I fixed it." She smirks, leaning over the console and resting her chin in an upturned palm.

She looks so happy.


	8. Beautiful Liars

Even before dinner, she noticed.

"Sweetie, would you get the plates?" He was just feet away from her, yet she received no response. "Sweetie?" she tried again. Silence. "Doctor."

"What?"

The snap carried such an edge that it startled her. Shoving her unease to one side, assuming that he'd simply been lost in thought- a plausible enough explanation, since he had enough memories filed away in his head to lose himself in daydreams for a million lifetimes. "I said, would you get the plates."

He technically complied, though from his expression alone she would have determined that he was repulsed by the request.

Her observation was swept under the carpet, joining the endless abyss of things residing there. Things like his muttering that he had to fix some unintelligible part of the console when she had suggested he come to bed last night. Things like his turning away from her as she'd leaned in to kiss him goodnight. Things like laying in their bed all night awake, waiting for him, only to still be alone when night had crept into morning.

She sauntered over to the kitchen doorway, hair bouncing on her shoulders. "I'll go and pick Clara up…" She winced as she watched him set the table, banging the plates down with what she felt was unnecessary force. "Sweetie, careful! We can't eat dinner off broken plates!"

He glanced up at her momentarily, and she gave him a warm smile that wasn't even slightly returned.

* * *

"I apologise in advance." Clara held up the casserole dish in her arms as the two of them made their way down the swirling steps into the kitchen. "This is my third attempt and it's still, slightly, charred."

"Honey, it can't be worse than prison food. Or fish fingers and custard…" River threw her a wry smile. "I'm sure it'll be lovely."

The Doctor didn't agree. River was going to warn her- he'd been in a particularly vexing mood that morning, even for him- but given that Clara had actually known this particular version of her husband longer than she had, she felt it might have been a little condescending.

As they served dinner, she wished she had. He barely spoke a word, even to greet Clara, and carried out each and every movement as if his limbs were physically laden with whatever was troubling him.

It wasn't until he finally spoke that River realised the uncomfortable silence was preferable.

"Clara!" he scoffed, pushing his plate away in disgust. "What flavour is this, rat poison? A million lifetimes and you're still beyond hopeless at making anything remotely edible."

"Doctor!" his wife hissed, her glare doing little to deter his sneer.

Clara waved a hand to dismiss the suddenly too-tight atmosphere. "It's alright, River, I'm used to it. I don't think he's ever said a nice word about my cooking."

"It doesn't deserve a nice word," he muttered, making River shoot him a dagger of a glare.

"Well," she plastered on a smile for Clara's benefit, "I think it's delicious."

"Oh, shut it, why don't you. There's no point in just telling people what they want to hear."

The women fell into stupefied silence, exchanging perplexed glances before their eyes fell on the Doctor who looked straight back at them.

"Close your mouth," he said with eerie calmness. "You'll catch flies."

She pressed her lips together abruptly, forming a thoroughly disapproving gaze that did nothing to reprimand him. He chewed his way theatrically through another bite. "You've outdone yourself, Clara." He acknowledged River with a brief nod. "Being poisoned by your lipstick was favourable to this."

River saw Clara's eyebrows dip, and made a mental note to explain later. Once she'd murdered her husband, perhaps.

"Goodness, you do know how to test people's patience."

"You say that like patience is something you possess."

She pushed her plate away when a strangely appealing image of frisbeeing it between his eyes flitted through her head. "Sweetie, is there something you want to talk about?" she queried instead in a syrupy tone she reserved solely for patronising him.

The corner of his mouth curled upwards bitterly. "I'd tell you the truth, but seeing as you're incapable of being truthful yourself I'm not sure you'd understand."

He'd picked quite the time to initiate what was rapidly escalating to be an almighty domestic, for whatever reason. She pressed her palms against the underside of the dining table in an effort to still them, vowing not to bite. Despite being utterly clueless as to what had caused his petulance, she sensed that he wanted specifically to aggravate her and there was no way in hell she was going to let him win.

"Perhaps I'll just lie through my teeth," he chided. "If it makes you feel more comfortable. That is your area of expertise, after all."

"Now, now, Doctor, don't be a hypocrite." She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Have I done something to upset you?"

He sighed as if her _breathing_ bored him. "I'm sorry to burst the bubble, Professor, but there are other things to preoccupy my thoughts outside the self-absorbed pocket in which you exist."

River blinked, feeling something snap inside her. The façade seemed futile now, seeing as he had apparently dropped his. She went for cold; she was good at that, and she'd be damned if she was going to let him see the damage now. "Is there a reason you're being a cantankerous arsehole?"

"What do you care?"

"Who says I do?"

"Oh, don't kid yourself. You might like to pretend you're something else, but we both know you're just as pathetic and sentimental as all of them." He made a sweeping gesture at Clara and she bit back a retort, realising that she could hardly defend her entire race; especially when her opponent was in a mood like this one.

Nevertheless, River was giving it a fair go. "And you're not?"

"In the past, yes; I'll be sure not to make such a mistake again."

"Caring is a mistake?" she asked.

"Caring is a waste of time." His eyes blazed across the table, and she gritted her back teeth to press the lump in her throat down. "They all wither and die anyway."

She _felt_ Clara's spirit sink, and decided she'd had enough.

"Sweetie." It was chilled; a warning. She saw it seep into him, knowing that it was more profound in such circumstances than the name he had chosen, or even the name he'd been born with. Her name for him: a reminder that he was hers. She'd always been somewhat possessive.

He muttered something, low enough for her to catch the sinister tone but nothing else.

"I'm sorry?"

His piercing eyes shot up, fixing her in a glare that made shivers curl around her bones. "I said, _stop_ calling me that."

His sharp comment dragged River away from her last shred of patience.

"What is the _matter_ with you?"

They were both on their feet with her exasperated cry before she had time to think, her head ringing with stinging fury as they engaged in an intense standoff across the dining table.

He threw her a bitter smile. "What are you going to go, bore me with another of your patronising lectures? Dinner was sickening enough."

His voice was a snarl; Clara sat between them gripping the edges of her chair, typically not one to be meek but feeling she had little choice in the matter due to the frankly terrifying atmosphere that had descended like thick smog.

"I think you should leave."

He scoffed. "This is my ship. _You_ leave."

Tears stinging the corners of her eyes, she threw an apologetic glance at Clara before lifting her chin defiantly at her tormentor. "That's fine by me. Thank you for dinner, Clara."

The Doctor remained on his feet, ignoring Clara's glower as he watched River glide out of the room. His beautiful liar; effortlessly graceful even when falling apart.


	9. Look Me in the Eye

The argument comes the next day.

They wait until Clara is gone; she doesn't deserve to be caught up in this. No-one does.

They stay away from each other until then; River spends the night on one of the chairs in the study, drifting in and out of a restless sleep. He paces by candlelight and avoids Clara's questions until she gives up and retires to her room.

The moment he sees her out of the doors, mumbling a sheepish goodbye and receiving a rather menacing scowl, he turns and there's River.

He doesn't speak, and neither does she for a while. When he wanders back into the console room she remains fixed at a safe distance, arms folded across her chest. "So," she starts eventually, in that eerily calm tone that used to fool him. "Are you going to tell me what the hell last night was about?" She sounds too tired for this, and he sees it on her face. There are half-moon shadows under her eyes. He can't blame her.

His not answering isn't helping matters either. "Why is it that you made me your wife, yet you refuse to tell me _anything_?"

The retort comes like lightning. "That's a little hypocritical of you now, isn't it?"

His voice is somewhat more chilling than he intended, but damn it, he's angry. He could easily have trained himself into loving her the way he used to if she hadn't ruined everything. They could have just floated through space and time, not truly happy but pretending to be, until one of them died.

Her eyes flash. "What are you talking about?"

"I have a collection of my old jackets. If you get bored of spending the night with your face buried in the one you have."

He's able to maintain her gaze long enough to see the morbid shock seep into her eyes, and then he's focussing on a button on the controls that he's never bothered to learn the purpose of. "It doesn't matter," he says quietly. "We were hardly happy anyway."

Her shoulders deflate as a little more life ebbs out of her. "You too?"

He gives a small nod, not quite able to muster the strength to speak words he knows will hurt her. And just like that a sort-of marriage, full of fiery adventures worthy of fairy tales and a love powerful enough to rip the entire Universe apart, is over.

"So everything about these last months has been a lie." She laughs bitterly, and the noise hits him like each and every regeneration-inducing injury in the same instant. "Just like the rest of our lives." She swears under her breath, holding her hands to her head. He watches her uselessly until she speaks again. "Why would you _do_ this?"

The accusations are overdue, he feels. He welcomes them with morbid pleasure, because he just wants to see _something_ in her, some of the old fire that makes her River. Then he will not feel as if he has killed her all over again.

"You could have just told me the truth," she cries, nostrils flaring as she attempts to curb her breathing, cling onto composure. "It had been a thousand years, Doctor; I didn't _expect_ you to still love me. I don't know why you feel as if you have this constant obligation to be with me, but you don't."

"I do love you," he tells her quietly, because in that moment it's the one thing in the Universe he's sure of. "That was never a lie."

There's surprise on her face before she swiftly buries it. He clings onto that later. "Then what _is_ it? What have I done to make you so unhappy?"

"Nothing," he says sincerely. It does little to soothe her, even though it's honest. It makes him wonder whether he'd have been better off just lying and telling her everything is perfect.

"Oh, _stop_ it! The time for pleasantries is over, Doctor, just tell me the truth!"

"The truth is what you want to hear, River? Sure? Ok. This is the truth." He doesn't want to do this. He wishes for something, anything- a Dalek fleet to come bursting through the doors, a Weeping Angel to appear and take them both. Something. So that they can do what they always do, get whisked away in the flurry of conflict and forget about all of the unspoken words.

It remains deadly still. "I can't remember you."

It's the first time he has ever said it to anything other than a voice interface, and as the words ring out into the silence he wishes he could pull them back because they _hit_ her.

"A millennium, River; a thousand years at Trenzalore, it ate away at my memories. By the time I got to this body, there was so little left of you that it was all I could do to remember your name."

"But you…" Realisation seeps into her features, and her voice falls flat. "You were just pretending, this entire time, like you always do. All those things you told me you'd remembered!"

"I… read your diary. And used what I found in there."

"Right. Clever." She nods curtly, lip curling. "What about the dress I wore to Darillium, everything you said about that; I'm assuming that was a lie too?"

"I wasn't upset about the dress because it reminded me of Darillium. I was upset because it didn't. Nothing does because there's nothing left in my head of our old days to be reminded of." She's shaking now, and he loathes himself to the point that he wishes he had not been granted a new regeneration cycle. God, he has twelve more bodies to get through where he'll have to live with that look he's brought to her face. "I'm sorry about yesterday. I am." He doesn't even know how sincere his own words are. In all honesty he's said worse than that to better people than her, but he is sorry for hurting her. He always has been. "But that's what a thousand years without you have made me into. River, I _never_ wanted you to see me like this. I'm ashamed of what I've become, so ashamed that when I found you again I tried so hard to be the man you fell in love with. But even that in itself was a lie, because back then I was running away from everything I was and I can't do that anymore."  
There's an odd sort of silence, and she's giving him that look that makes him feel like the stupid one which, to be fair, he may well be. "You don't understand."

That's news to him.

"Do you think I don't _know_ that you used to put on an act, Doctor? I'm your _wife_. I know you better than anyone, _everything_ about you. I saw you at your worst; I saw who you really were, and I loved you for it. I still do."

The vision of her blurs before him, and he has to look away. If nothing else, he feels he ought to be brave because that's all she's ever been.

"I don't miss who _you_ used to be, Doctor. I miss what _we_ used to be."

He scoffs softly. "What, being in the wrong order?"

"Yes."

He's utterly dumbfounded. All she ever bloody _did_ was complain about it. "You've got to be joking."

She takes a weary deep breath, letting it out steadily. He can tell it isn't going to be much longer. "All I ever wanted was to be in the right order with you, but now we are I can see our whole life together for what it really was. And that's what I miss; I miss not knowing this."

 _He_ misses the days where they could know everything about each other from just a touch or exchanged look. "What do you mean?"

"Everything we were was out of necessity. You had to be with me because, god forbid you cause a bloody paradox! You had to get to know me because I left you no choice. I died to save your life, I was the lost child of your best friends, my whole was an epic fuck-up because of you; it was only right you gave me _something_ to compensate, wasn't it?"

"River-"

"Don't even try lying to me, Doctor, because I know what the truth is. You let me in your life because you had to, because you knew you'd already done it- it was written in stone. You married me to get what you wanted. You said goodbye to me to shut me up. You were with me to _pacify_ me."

"Is that really what you believe?"

"Am I wrong?" She glares at him across their distance, eyes glistening dangerously. He wishes she would march across and slap him. At least buried in the haze of anger there would be _something_ , some of the passion that he can feel draining with each and every word as she slips further away from him.

"Look me in the eye and tell me you would have fallen in love with me if we'd met in the right order."

He retaliates because it's the only thing he can do. He doesn't want to lie to her any more. "Look me in the eye and tell me you want a life with me in the right order."

She looks away almost instantly. Knowing that what they have asked of each other is something neither of them is capable of, a gloomy silence settles across the console room.

"Then what's the point of even doing this?"

She's crying now. He wants to go over to her and shake her shoulders and tell her to stop because there is no way in hell he is strong enough to see her break down.

Her voice shakes horribly; it's worse when he sees her cheeks flush and knows that she's humiliated by her lack of composure, because then he knows she cannot help it. "Tell me."

He can't.

He wants to. Because there is a point, because despite everything he loves her and the thought of losing her out of his life again physically pains him. But he is two thousand years old, and he has so many, _so many_ feelings and thoughts cooped up inside his ancient head beyond the human realms of comprehension that he cannot possibly form them into words.

That is why. Why he is the way he is, why he talks all the time but he never _says_ anything. He isn't _like_ her. He isn't like anyone, even if he did spend years playing pretend- well enough to make her, like others, fall for him. And they all think he's simply awkward, not accustomed to human emotions, and they are so wrong. He is more used to them than he ever wanted to be. He has travelled the Universe, seen war and death and destruction- of course he isn't shy. He's frightened, because he knows what emotions do. He knows that love kills far more than hate. And even if he thinks it's worth risking- which god, for River Song, he does- he cannot possibly begin to explain the way two thousand years has made him feel.

So he keeps quiet. And she leaves.


	10. Reality's Ruin

It's shocking how quickly normality descends.

The vortex manipulator is a godsend. She hops around until she's procured enough money to get herself a flat, in the same century as the one she left behind when the Library beckoned.

It's a different city with a different University, and psychic paper jammed full of fake but outstanding credentials works wonders. She's giving lectures on archaeology within the week.

Every night she comes home to her little flat. It's purposely dingy; warmth and cosiness don't sit right with her, not after the orphanages and Stormcage. Still, it's comfortable enough; her little space in which to exist. She curls up with a book or unmarked dissertations in the late afternoon, waiting for the evening to crawl upon her.

Her name goes on the list for every expedition available. She volunteers because the evenings straining to hear the sound of brakes being left on- however much she tries not to- quickly grow unbearable.

She goes through phones so often that they begin to greet her at the shop. A routine develops every few nights in which her hand drifts and pulls back and drifts and pulls back from pressing the number that will call the Tardis that eventually a collection of dents in her wall accumulates where she throws her mobile at it.

Each time she departs a part of her hopes never to come back. To find another shadow-infested world in which she can lose herself. She might save someone. She might save a whole species- go down in history as a brave stranger to all. Brilliant and unloved.

It is eleven months of blisteringly boring normality before she gets her wish, in the form of an expedition that turns out to be her last.

* * *

He gets on with it. He always does- he's a veritable expert at moving on by now. Clara keeps asking if he's ok; his answers are short and the subject is swiftly changed because he doesn't entirely know what will happen if he verbalises the feelings that ping through him like hot lightning. When missing her grows to hurt he runs; he keeps running. It's all he knows.

Alone, only ever when alone, he dims the Tardis lights and sits in the dark. He becomes lost in thoughts of what he could be doing if she was next to him.

A golden ghost appears night after night. She shimmers, a little pulse of light, floating around the controls and whispering words he can't quite distinguish. Even after months he is unsure of whether it is his own wishful thinking or the Tardis mourning the loss of her child, comforting herself.

Words he is convinced he should have said bubble up until it is like the morning after Darillium all over again- and he feels just as pitifully helpless. His eyes always drift to the phone, and he makes himself swear that he will not give in because _she deserves a life, she's better off without me, I must not ruin her any more than I already have. I must not._

He sees her sometimes, and it's never accidental. The coordinates for her flat are firmly fixed in the rotor, and if he puts the outer shell on invisible and parks himself outside her building- if he's lucky- he will catch a glimpse of her, just a second out of the many hours of often waits, as she draws the curtains or adjusts one of the ornaments on her windowsill. She never sees him because he is never what she is looking for, and that satisfies him. When he knows that she is safe and well, a little veil of tranquillity settles over him and he is sure that he can persevere with sadness if she has joy.

She left her diary. He flicks through it until he is dizzy and it is falling apart at the seams, and then he opens the doors and lets the pages become lost between the stars. He performs small actions like rituals, some to hold on and some to let go. Her shoes remain tangled with his; he always straightens them unconsciously. He allows himself the privilege of lingering, but little more.

After almost a year he is solid in the belief that he really will never see her again; they will forever remain unfinished. He tells himself that he is at peace.

And then the phone rings, the illusion of composure shatters and what's left of him breaks into pieces too fragmented to be fixed.


	11. the Carer, the Shattered and the Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Retcon is something which is made use of in Torchwood, therefore obviously wasn't invented by me and belongs to its creators. If you're unfamiliar with it, don't worry as its effects are explained within the chapter.
> 
> Mr James Carmon is an OC, but just a random little one to fill in a bit of missing plot who doesn't appear in further chapters so don't think too much of him. Unlike River, he carries no hidden mystery. ;)
> 
> Ok. Deep breath…

"Doctor, what's going _on_?"

Clara tried asking it slowly, putting emphasis on each word just as she did with the difficult kids in detention who wouldn't do their homework. Even they were small fry in comparison to this; she'd lost count of the amount of times she had tried to draw an answer from the man sitting next to her in the waiting room.

She'd groaned when the Tardis had announced itself in her living room with the typical orchestra of wheezing, rose to her feet and put her best Authoritative Teacher stance on all ready to tell him that no, she did not have time to visit a _fascinating_ and very probably dangerous faraway planet tonight, and she resented his assumption that she always had nothing better to do, didn't he understand that she had a boyfriend- a _maths_ teacher- and a job to go to-?

Her hands had slipped off her hips when a good few minutes had crawled by and the Tardis doors remained firmly shut. Sensing that something was most definitely amiss- he would have popped his head out of the doors with a manic grin on his face and insisted that she accompany him to somewhere with a ridiculous name otherwise- she'd tried the door.

The usual one gave way slightly but couldn't be opened, as if there was a weight behind it. And sure enough, when she'd pushed the other door it gave way with ease and she had found the Doctor just inside, leaning against the first and apparently waiting for her.

The beginnings of any attempt to extract some form of explanation from him concerning this somewhat uncharacteristic behaviour had trailed off uselessly on taking in his countenance.

She didn't believe she'd ever seen him this way. He looked almost smaller, shrunken in on himself with ashen skin and eyes that barely seemed to be capable of remaining open, and when avoiding her questions it wasn't with his usual enigmatic sparkle.

Knowing that he needed her- no one in that state should be left alone- she'd let him fly them in silence to an unknown destination, watching him trudge around the controls as if every movement wounded him.

She'd stepped outside to find herself in an earth-looking hospital corridor, and a horrible anxiety regarding why the Doctor had brought her here had forced her to break the silence. Her interrogation as he'd stumbled into the waiting room and sunk into chair had achieved precisely nothing; she'd watched the little cheap clock on the opposite wall tick almost an hour away without hearing a word from him.

He sat almost curled up in the horrible plastic chair, hands clasped and chin tucked into his chest as if in silent prayer.

Her patience had begun to wane. "You know I was just about to go to dinner with Danny? First time in weeks we've had any time to ourselves with it being exam season, and I've got loads of marking to-"

"Shut up, shut up, shut up. Shut. Up."

She would have retaliated, had his voice not faltered and cracked on the last utterance and she'd looked up at him in alarm to find a tear slipping from his closed eyes. "Doctor, _please_. You're scaring me."

"I'm scaring you?" he echoed; when his eyes flew open the rims were lined with angry red and she wondered how long whatever this was about had plagued him before coming to find her. "Good. You should be scared, Clara. Be very scared, because I don't know what this is going to do to me but I know it's not going to be pleasant," he snapped.

She clasped her hands to stop them trembling and swallowed down a lump in her throat, forcing herself to stare him down calmly until he bowed his head, defeated.

"I needed you," she heard him mumble, voice barely audible even in the silence of the deserted white room in which they resided where the white walls seemed overly harsh against her eyes. "I couldn't come here on my own."

"Why are we here?" she asked gently, sensing correctly that an explanation was finally coming.

He took a deep breath which shuddered when it left him. "I got a phone call," he huffed with some effort, gritting his teeth together until he could find strength to speak again. "There was no-one else they could contact. She must have put me down as her next-of-kin before, before everything went wrong. Because I was all she ever had."

As broken as his speech was, it didn't take Clara long to piece two and two together. Her whisper of "River?" made him physically convulse, and she knew she was right.

"She's here?" Clara tried prompting. He nodded, clasping his hands so tightly that his knuckles threatened to burst through the chalk-white skin.

It took him minutes to find strength enough to speak; even then, something had gone from his voice. If she couldn't have seen his lips moving with her own eyes, Clara would never have believed that it was the same man speaking who talked effervescently of stars with shining eyes and an impish grin. "They told me over the phone. Critical condition. Accidental Retcon overdose from prolonged exposure; well, they said accidental. They don't know that. Only she did; so I never will."

Noticing the tremor of his hands, she almost didn't want to ask. "What's Retcon-?"

The clack of brisk footsteps approaching silenced her. "Excuse me; are you Professor Song's husband?"

The nurse's voice bore that horribly professional air of detachment; she loomed above them when Clara glanced up, a sickly sweet smile on her face gleaming through crimson lipstick. The Doctor didn't respond with any more than a pained sigh, glassy eyes drifting to an unfocused spot on the far wall and sticking there.

"Yes, he is." Knowing too well that she was the only person he had left who could be brave on his behalf, Clara stood up and extended her hand. "Miss Oswald, I'm his… carer."

The nurse's eyes flickered to the Doctor anxiously, before she consciously steeled her expression and gave a polite nod. "I see. Would you like to come with me?"

The Doctor sat frozen on his chair, eyes swimming and head twitching slightly in what could have been a refusal, though his thoughts were anyone's guess. Clara held her hand out to him, and with all the look of a frightened child he clutched it as if it was what his life depended upon.

* * *

It was a big hospital, though probably not as colossal as it seemed as they made their way with funereal sluggishness down the endless corridors, wincing at every booming clack of the nurse's heels as she strode in front. "I trust Doctor Halstead explained your wife's condition to you over the phone?"

The Doctor confirmed her question gruffly; it was the only word he spoke, and the rest of the journey was spent drowning in uncomfortable hush until they approached a grey door just like all the other grey doors peppering the grey walls. For someone like the Doctor's wife, Clara thought, this was nowhere near fitting for a final resting place- if that was what it was going to end up being. She prayed until her vision swam for any other outcome.

She heard him draw in a breath as the nurse pushed the door open, picking up his feet as if they were magnetised to the floor. Looking over his shoulder, she saw the unconscious River Song lying in the single bed of the dingy room, abundance of golden hair fanned out across the pillow and a faint rosy tint along her cheeks as if merely lost in a peaceful sleep. "I'll give you some privacy." The nurse left them to drift helplessly in the room, the way one was propelled powerlessly through the throes of a nightmare.

"Thank god." Clara ran a hand through her hair, shattering the eerie silence. She'd expected life support, horrific injuries, tubes, and that was being optimistic; a large part of her had believed they were being led to a morgue. She couldn't help breathing a short sigh of relief. "I thought she was dead," she whispered.

The Doctor didn't acknowledge her, dropping into the chair next to River's bed where what little life was left seemed to desert him. A pitiful groan came from deep in his throat, making his shoulders droop with the sheer effort of it so that he seemed to collapse in on himself.

The sound of the door bursting open startled Clara, and she wheeled around to find a young man in oversized khaki clothes, a belt full of silvery gadgets and heavy lace-up boots stumbling into the hospital room, ragged hair pushed back and creases under his round eyes. "Oh, you're here!" He darted over to the chair where the Doctor was slumped. "Thank goodness, um… hello. James Carmon, I… I was with Professor Song on the expedition. Sorry, I've been calling my family and letting them know where I am, I thought it best to stay until someone else was with her, um- I'm assuming you're her husband?"

"Go away." It was muttered coldly, and he never once took his eyes from River.

Clara stepped forwards. "Sorry. He's, um, having a bit of a tough time coping, I think," she explained weakly, fully expecting the Doctor to whip his head around and glare at her- perhaps declare in a yell that he did not require her to fight his battles. It was somewhat unnerving when he didn't even blink.

Carmon's eyes drifted to Clara as she spoke, dipping in confusion. "Oh. Hello… sorry, it's just- the Professor never mentioned that she had a daughter."

It was enough for the Doctor's jaw to clench. Still, in ordinary circumstances he'd probably have started what he believed was a perfectly logical point about the three of them looking the same age. What used to be ordinary circumstances, she mused, wondering if she was currently living through what would come to be known as the day everything changed.

"No, I- I'm not their daughter. I'm just a friend."

"Oh. Well, I- I thought I should explain, I… she was my mentor. She offered to take me to this little planet to show me what happens on a typical dig… it was just a routine trip, she said we wouldn't even need to do risk assessment, but when- when I saw the name of the planet, I knew from my studies that it was crawling with the B67 compound… I'm not sure what the full effects are, but I know they aren't good." He ran a hand through his hair; Clara's eyes darted to the Doctor, attempting to gauge some sort of reaction that could help her solve this mystery. He didn't even seem to be listening, fingertips ghosting briefly over the back of River's limp hand.

"I warned her, said that maybe she should do checks before going outside," Carmon went on, chewing his lip as he followed Clara's gaze and found River. "But she insisted… I didn't think to stop her, I mean, she's been doing this for years, I thought she knew best… but I watched her through the glass pane of the ship as she went outside, and- I think it was roughly five minutes, maybe less, when I saw her collapse." He rubbed a hand over tired eyes, guilt carved into his youthful features. "She was wearing a closed-circuit teleport device, which meant I could get her body back to the ship. She was unconscious the whole time… I brought her here; I wasn't sure what else to do…" He swallowed, rubbing his chin anxiously. "I've just graduated. This was my first expedition. I…"

Clara placed a hand on his arm gently. "It wasn't your fault, Mr Carmon. James. Don't worry; we'll stay with her and make sure she's ok. You should go back to your family."

He nodded, wringing his hands and pulling a little crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. "Here's my number; please, call me, and let me know if she's… if she's alright. I'll only worry."

Clara agreed with all the warmth she could manage, ushering the young man towards the door and spinning brief lies when he asked if the man in the chair was going to be alright.

When it was just the two of them with River once again, she pulled up a little plastic chair to perch gingerly next to the Doctor. His eyes darted to the note in her hands before she could speak, long enough for her to see the thick tears pooling in them. "Throw that away," he instructed shortly, snatching the paper from her and crumpling it into a little gnarled ball.

She watched it as it sailed across the room, landing on the far windowsill through which a dusky light was filtering. "Why did you do that? He'll want to know, when she wakes up-"

"No he won't." He threw her a fleeting glance, fierce enough to leave her with a sick feeling curdling in the pit of her stomach. "He won't be able to live with himself."

Clara drew her fingernails between her teeth, biting back a shiver when he outstretched his hand to sweep a stray tendril from River's pale cheek and his hand lingered there, desperate not to let go of her. "She looks ok," she wagered weakly. "Maybe the damage isn't as bad as they think?"

"This isn't a fairy tale, Clara." His hand dropped back into his lap abruptly. "No mind can sustain its memory with that dosage of Retcon."

"What do you mean?" she asked. "What is Retcon, what does it do?"

He recited it as if reading from a book. "Retcon; otherwise known as Compound B67. Usually extracted and put into pills for human purpose, but found in vast quantities in its natural form on a few planets. Pills have to be consumed, but in raw form a few minutes of exposure is more than enough for the effects to take hold."

It was usually infuriating when he talked like this, so full of jargon that it may as well have been another language. But this time, as she watched his eyes flit across River's sleeping features with almost panicked rapidity, she sensed that perhaps he could do little else but recite facts.

"The effects?" she asked.

"The effects," he repeated in a snarl, each syllable falling on her ears with an almost painful punch as if he so desperately wanted to be angry at the world for this but had no energy left with which to do so. "It is one of the most powerful amnesiacs in the entire Universe. Enough of a dosage causes complete, irretrievable memory loss."

She clamped a hand over her gaping mouth, spun into a shock that made breath abandon her lungs. He barely noticed, lost in a dizzy haze of his own grief that she only now understood.

"When she wakes up, she'll remember nothing about her entire life. She will have no idea who I am." His mouth curled bitterly. "And do you know what, Clara? It's probably just as well."

Her hand rested gently on his arm, not knowing what she could possibly say. She settled with a strangled apology, only thanking the stars that he wasn't alone and mentally resolving not to let him be given what he could be capable of with this sitting on his shoulders.

The Doctor's solemn utterance drew her head up from where it had come to rest on her upturned palm. "You were right."

She shook her head, swallowing back tears. "About what?"

He nodded at River's sleeping corpse, voice drained of all emotion he was capable of possessing. "All that made her River Song; every single thing that we did, every day, every place, every word… it's gone. It's lost, and there isn't a hope in this world or the next of finding it. How isn't that dying?"


	12. My Stranger

In the four days it took the woman who used to be River Song to wake up, that little hospital room became the centre of the Doctor's Universe.

With day one came realisation that felt like cold tar in his veins.

"She knew."

Clara blinked her eyes heavily to shake the sleep from them, lifting her head from where she was curled in the chair at the end of the bed with his jacket over her as a makeshift duvet. "Knew what?"

It was the first words he'd exchanged with her in hours. Poor Clara. He'd never offered to take her home, and she'd never asked. The Doctor sat at the hospital window, the stars looking like black holes now. "She always knew. She had more knowledge of the Universe than I did."

Clara gave up asking him to elaborate; just as well, seeing as he'd barely retained the ability to speak. All of time had snapped before him, and all he was left to think was that River had known exactly what would happen when she'd stepped outside on that godforsaken planet.

* * *

Day two brought fury and burst knuckles.

Why didn't he just _lie_?

It had been a simple enough request, after all; what a marriage, when neither of them could look each other in the eye. But he could have kept up the pretence, he could have – and would have – lied through his _teeth_ if it would have prevented this. Yes, River, I would have fallen in love with you if we'd met in the right order. No, River, we weren't born out of guilt and compensation. Of course I remember you, River, how could I ever, ever forget you, River- she would have fallen in his arms, cried, probably, there'd have been apologies and days of making up and their marriage, full of false promises, would have been just peachy.

All he'd done his whole damn life was lie. Something to be ashamed of, perhaps, but certainly nothing to regret if this was where honesty left him. This, he thought bitterly as he looked on his wife, this was what the truth did.

Clara started as he leapt from his chair. "Where are you going?"

"I need something from the Tardis," was his gruff explanation.

Fizzing with hatred for everything he had allowed himself to be, everything the Universe had made him, he charged into the Tardis with one purpose in mind. When his skin bore scorch marks from the sparks and his knuckles stung like hell, split open from the repeated contact with the metal console, he was grimly satisfied. Mumbling an apology to his beautiful ship, he scrubbed his eyes dry and trudged back out again.

Clara's eyes popped when he flopped back into his chair without a word, breathing heavily enough to wake the dead. "What happened to your hands?"

"Nothing."

* * *

Day three brought wild fantasies.

Timelines be damned, he's not letting this happen. He's going to break all the rules of time because he _can_ , and he's going to go back and get her, his River, and make this what could have been instead of what is.

He can go to her flat, drum on the door until his knuckles bleed. He catches her just in time, yes – she has her suitcase in her hand, in fact. He sees that look in her eyes that is always present after one of their rows, trying for fury but settling at relief that he's in front of her. She probably asks what he's doing there, voice successfully cold even though the tremble of her bottom lip betrays her. And he wraps her up in his arms, cold and unloving nature cast aside, maybe forever for her because he needs to be what _she_ needs. What was he thinking, wasting time they weren't even supposed to have? He murmurs all of that against her neck, holding her so tightly that she could burst and telling her he's _sorry_ , and not to go on her expedition. She asks how he knows about the expedition– he sees that knowing suspicion when she pulls back, because she always knows, doesn't she – and he whispers, what could he whisper… spoilers. He whispers spoilers and for once it's enough for her to drop her suitcase and let him pull her close again. He's never, ever going to let her go this time.

He feels himself fix in steely resolve, but then his eyes snap open and the flat melts away as dreams do. He's left with empty arms and River lying motionless under the glare of the hospital lights.

He could do all of that, go back and keep her from ever ending up here. Except he can't. Because if this has taught him anything, it's that he's far from invincible. He may bear comparisons to Storms and Gods and Mighty Warriors across the Universe but he could not save his wife.

All their lives together, and this is where it ends. He's to blame for that, and there's not a thing he can do about it except live on because that's what he does, isn't it?

* * *

_Day Four._

The Doctor lets a tormented sleep carry him away, because he's so very tired. He manages a few minutes, at most, before a timid voice he thinks he vaguely recognises stirs him.

"Excuse me?"

It all happens far too soon. When his eyes open they immediately drink in the vision of the woman who was once his wife, perfectly awake, staring at him like the stranger that he is.

"Hello," he greets her quietly. A little pang inside him makes the comparison to Demon's Run and laughs bitterly, though outwardly he remains solemn. It's his turn for the bravery façade.

"Where… where am I?" She's afraid; that much she knows, and it's all he knows too. Her eyes are wide like a child's, but there's no recognition there now. He expected that. He anticipated that the build-up of memories and love and anguish that made them burn to have vanished. It's still the single most painful thing he's had the misfortune of living through, and really having known that would be the case does not lessen the pain, but the feeling that this is exactly what he deserves is morbidly comforting. The inevitability helps too; the sensations that's forever present, at the beginning of each and every doomed relationship he's dragged into.

He knew this would happen. And not just four days ago, no; since the moment he'd found her again she'd been ageing, decaying, dying, just like the rest of them if only a little slower. It doesn't even matter anymore. He only should have known better that he couldn't have been so lucky as to find an exception to his curse.

"You're in hospital. You were in an accident that's taken your memory, but you're safe. Don't worry." He curses himself for sounding like he cares. He doesn't need to be giving the game away, because he's already resolved what he's going to be to her now. Not her husband or lover, no; not the madman in a box, her mother's best friend. She deserves, needs, better than all of that.

She's shaking; her hands tangle in her hair and a heavy sob catches in her throat. "I don't know… I can't – remember, I…!"

The Doctor clasps his hands on his knee, pressing his eyes shut for a moment to steel himself. It works; he sounds impressively detached, as the person he will now be to her should be. "Your name is Melody Pond." She's not River Song, because River Song was something they made together. River Song is a fairytale now.

Melody blinks, gazing at this visitor who is her only acquaintance in what little existence she now knows. "Who are you?"

A faint smile crosses his features helplessly; he's always been a sentimental idiot, after all. "I'm your doctor."


End file.
